


syzygy

by dantiloquent



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Conspiracy, Government Conspiracy, Minor Character Death, Moral Dilemmas, Murder Mystery, Thriller, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-23
Updated: 2016-11-23
Packaged: 2018-09-01 09:18:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 66,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8618752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dantiloquent/pseuds/dantiloquent
Summary: YOUNG MAN KILLED IN OWN HOME.Toby Stanford, 25, was found dead in his home this morning. Police have confirmed the case as a homicide. A cause of death has not been disclosed.The prime suspect is a young adult male, Caucasian, seen exiting the premises in the early hours of this morning. The Metropolitan Police urge members of the public with any information concerning this case to come forward.    [click here to read more] -Phil Lester, an amateur photographer trapped in a monotonous life, is the last person to see Toby Stanford's killer before they disappear into London's crowds. He decides to keep that a secret - alongside the photos of them he has stashed away in his backpack. In a matter of hours, he is flung into a new life: one of clues and murders and lies. In a world swarming with surveillance, it's a battle against time and the police. But Phil will find this killer, and he'll get his story - or will he? Sometimes, not even a camera can capture exactly what is living beneath the surface.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> hello! this was written for the phandom big bang 2016!  
> for the wonderful art for this fic, click [here,](http://evermoriver.tumblr.com/post/153571288228/dan-howell-is-not-a-man-who-wanted-to-run-he-is-a) [here,](http://evermoriver.tumblr.com/post/153571301153/the-first-page-is-a-note-scrawled-in-pencil-on) and [here!](http://evermoriver.tumblr.com/post/153571312788/he-looks-at-dan-and-dan-looks-back-dan-nods-he)(warning for spoilers, though)  
> for a full set of author's notes, and to reblog this lil thing, click [here!](http://dantiloquent.tumblr.com/post/153571371506/syzygy-fic-masterpost)  
> (if there are any issues/typos etc, don't hesitate to let me know! thank you for reading! lemme know what you think, if you want!)  
> TEMPORARY EDIT: this fic has been nominated for the phanfic awards 2016! see [here](http://dantiloquent.tumblr.com/post/155340554441/fic-awards-2016) for details!

The day Phil remembers where he put his camera will be a day of celebration. It’s always the same: he puts it down, swearing it’s a logical, obvious place to put it, and spends a couple of minutes the next morning stumbling around his flat looking for it. He needs a permanent solution, probably, but that requires a degree of thought and consistency he doesn’t possess. It’s on his to-do list, he promises.

After a blind minute of searching, Phil finds his camera under his portfolio, both left on his sofa - where he put them last night. He pushes the portfolio aside, cups his camera in his hand, and continues searching for its case.

The portfolio is an old one that he can’t stop looking back through. Its contents are mostly pictures of his ex-boyfriend, Ronan, in all of the poses and filters his infatuation could think of. An art student, Ronan was the enigmatic, cold-hearted sort who kept Phil falling in love with him again and again; never quite seeming to care as much as Phil did, but simultaneously being the most loving, lovable person he’d ever met. He was the perfect subject for Phil’s photos. That was the first thought Phil had upon meeting him. And it’s the last recurring thought he has now Ronan’s gone. He might be heartbroken, maybe.

(“Oh, Phil, when are you going to get rid of these?” his mother asked, pouting, when she visited last weekend. Her voice carried the same sympathy it used to when he was a child curled into the recesses of his bedroom, crying over smashed LEGO.

“Maybe never. Maybe I’ll never get rid of them,” Phil replied, blankly, with enough jest to shield his stubbornness.)

Since then, his time has been filled by his work, both paid and unpaid. At work, he does the tasks given, trying to get assigned more than the inconsequential columns he’s left with. His job at the newspaper firm is substantial enough and pays well, and he did fight to get a role there after quitting his last job, but he doesn’t want his words to be what he’s known for. He wants to take pictures; to take them all the time, to show them to people, to have people study them and see what he feels. That’s his dream. ( _Dream_ is far flung, sugar caught in his teeth and scratching his gums. Never mind.) In the time out of work, he’s taking pictures, or editing them, or deciding where to go next. The camera sits comfortably in the slump of his palm. Spare surfaces, nooks, and crannies are covered with his photos. Spare time is compressed into the bare minutes before sleep and after waking; before, with Ronan, he had all the free time in the world. Now it’s gone, somehow - his fault.

Finding his case, he shoves his camera into it, heaves his bag off the kitchen table, and hurries out of the door into the morning mist.

The June rain makes the air thick and humid, and moving through it is like syrup running through wood. Clouds sulk in the sky: gloomy, dark, heavy from heaven itself pushing at its seams. Hazy, the London skyline rears its head, teeth reflecting the light of a low-lying sun. Heat hangs like a lace curtain in the air; wafting and billowing into his face with every breeze and passing car. A taxi rushes past and splashes water onto the curb. Two buses speed past the end of his road and continue into the centre, bleeding a startling red into the lines of buildings. Phil addresses the view once, when he tilts his head up and squints into the light drizzle, before pulling up his hood and ducking into the nearby tube station.

-

He sits up on the second floor of a coffee shop, wishing he wasn’t wearing a jacket. Despite the deluge filling London’s streets, it’s reaching twenty five degrees celsius and it’s barely seven am.

He’s so tired. With his camera poised in his hand, covering the right half of his face. With the busy sketches of his mind prominent in his peripheral despite his attempts to execute all thought. With his worn, black jeans and his yellow jumper with the cream patches where the colour’s died. He’s pressed almost into the window; every minute or so his spare hand comes up to wipe away the condensation his breath has left. He’s sat with a T-junction opposite him on the other side of the street, where a small, gloomy lane snakes away from the main road and disappears behind stores and blank buildings.

The morning rush is the perfect source for subjects. To have them all in the same photo, all coordinating and communicating with each other - even if they are unaware of the hows and whens - is the perfect capture of life. The woman with her dragging ponytail and knee-length coat, the hand holding her coffee pointlessly elevated above her head; the father with the rain-speckled glasses and two toddlers hanging off each hand, their fingers ribbons knotting them together; the queue of taxis lining up behind the red light on the opposite side of the road. It’s not the very centre of London, but it will do. It does.

Phil takes a few photos, using the fog coating the windows as an artistic device in lieu of a cause for frustration. He’s too tired for that - but declines the waitress’ offer of a drink the first time she comes up to him. He does so politely, with a smile and a shake of his head that sends his hair into his eyes again (it’s long enough now to get caught behind his glasses). She’s just doing her job, and he respects that.

Upon a second offer for some beverage, he complies and orders something caffeinated, he doesn’t mind what.

“Tired?” she says. Her hair sits in tight corkscrew curls on the top of her head. “Work keep you late?”

“Yeah,” Phil agrees. It did, and then he uploaded some photos, and then waited for the insomnia to slip off him. Still, he doesn’t expect much of a boost from any beverage, and turns back to the bustling street.

The cafe is a common haunting spot for him. It gets busy during the day, too busy, but in these early hours, only him, a few others, and the staff occupy the space. The silence is fragmented by the rumbles of traffic outside, the occupants split between the two floors. Most days, he’s alone up here, with the full street laid out before his camera lens.

The chair digs into his waist as he twists in his chair, following a flicker of movement across the street.

A few photos later, she comes back with a drink, and Phil accepts it with a thankful smile.

In the minutes before he has to leave, the rain grows heavier; bashing out a drumroll on the drains and guttering, knocking down octaves on window panes, and flooding the street with writhing water. The condensation on the glass is more insistent, and, beyond it, the outside world is clouded by streams of rainfall; the camera can barely pick out detail in the smog, except for the odd stain of a person. Phil watches a twenty-something straggler duck into a taxi, but loses the vehicle in the sludge of sights the street has transformed into - it’s as if the world is draining away down a sink. He’s forced to give up, and as he stands, manages to spill the remains of his coffee on his trousers. He curses under his breath, but his attempts to wipe it away only cause burns on his fingers as well as his thigh, and the whole ordeal leaves him scowling and on edge.

Dropping his paper cup in the bin, he tugs up his hood and shoves open the door. He steps into the storm.

-

Except for those who make eye contact with him, Phil says nothing to any of his coworkers as he works his way up the floors to his desk. His clothes are more or less sopping, and he can’t remember if the spare set of clothes he keeps in his drawer are still there.

“Morning,” he calls out to Mark and Lucy, pushing open the door to their joint office, and heading straight for the spare clothes drawer. Mark is in the adjoined kitchen, harmonising with a humming coffee maker; Lucy is already at work on her computer.

“Morning,” Lucy replies. She presses the enter key, next looks up. “Shit, did you forget your brolly again?”

“It wasn’t raining when I left,” he says. The clothes are there, thank fuck, and he grabs the shirt and trousers. He slams the drawer shut with his leg.

“Fair.”

“Unlike the weather,” Phil responds, scowling out the window. Lucy hums in acknowledgement, turning back to her work. Bunching the clothes in his hand, he makes his way to the bathroom.

He passes the kitchen on the way, and Mark, with a hand clinging to the door frame, leans out to talk to him, “Alright, Phil?”

“Could be drier,” Phil says, and tugs at a dripping corner of his shirt.

Mark’s expression falls into one of pity. “Call me if you ever need a lift.”

“Thank you, I appreciate that.” Mark’s number is saved in his phone somewhere. He thinks. He doesn’t have much faith in the accessibility of any of his photography spots, though.

“Anytime, mate.” He cracks a grin.

“You?”

Mark starts swinging around on one leg, anchored by his hand gripping the frame. “Ah, y’know, I’m fine. What’s new, really.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Did you see the match last night?”

Rolling his eyes, “you _know_ I didn’t,” Phil pulls open the door leading to the bathroom.

“Ha! It’s not even football season!” Mark displays a boisterous glee, overplayed for Phil’s embarrassment.

Phil flips him the finger and exclaims, “for fuck’s _sake_ ,” as he disappears into the bathroom.

“Language!” Lucy chides, loud enough for him to hear.

Phil yanks open the door to reply, “Tell Mark to stop bullying me!”

“You make it so easy, though.” _That_ was Mark. Phil doesn’t grace him with an answer, just kicks his chair later on the way back to his desk.

-

Phil works on his columns all day - the small articles, the ones that fill the back pages. It’s banal and irritating work. He needs stories with more substance, more interest - and, preferably, he wants to be using his own photos. But his firm have nothing for him - he never stops asking - so he has to make do.

Noon finally comes. Sometimes he goes out for lunch, taking his camera with him, but today he has his lunch packed, and spends his break editing and printing photos he took the other day.

“Very artsy,” Mark comments, striding past. With a flick of his finger, he switches the coffee maker on; crossing his arms, he settles back to wait.

“That’s a long word,” Phil replies, after a moment.

“I’ve got more where that came from, too,” Mark says, and does a dramatic wink.

Phil utters a disgusted noise. “Ugh, gross. Go away.”

“Coffee?” Mark tilts his head to one side, looking at him. It’s a harmless gesture, made to tease rather than to understand. Harmless, thoughtless.

“...Fine. Please,” Phil relents.

“Good man.” Mark claps his hands together, and disappears into the kitchen.

The photos finish printing, and he scoops them up in one hand. Carefully, he slots them into the gaps in his plastic folder. At the end of the day, he takes these photos through to his boss, Zoe.

“I’m really trying, Phil,” she tells him as he lays them on her desk with the comment, _some of my work to look at and use, if they want_. “But there’s no gaps for you to fill.”

“I can replace,” Phil says, holding eye contact with her.

She breaks it. “I know, but you know what my managers are like. It’s too much paperwork, bad treatment, etc. etc. Not their style.” Her eyebrows raised, she takes Phil’s photographs and places them on top of the pile. Zoe has the decency not to bin them. At least she believes in Phil - or pities him. Maybe it’s all pity, maybe he carries the pathos of a discarded sentiment in the way his shoulders slump.

“I know. Thank you for trying, Zoe.”

“It’s all selfish, Phil, honestly, I just enjoy looking at your stuff too much.” She grins at him, her pen pressed to her bottom lip.

“I’m still thankful.”

“Then I’ll say it’s no problem. Have a good evening. University Challenge is on tonight, isn’t it?”

“As _if_ I watch that,” Phil lies.

“Yeah, as if.” She gives him a knowing look. “Have a good evening.”

Phil cuts off any complaints he has towards the executive and his decision not to hire his photography skills, and turns to go. He wipes a hand down his trouser leg. His eyes rest on the tv screen Zoe has in her office; it’s on mute, but subtitles indite the headlines of the 6 o’clock news.

A camera pans down a street. A pack of police cars line a road, where one road meets another, the intersection stuck in webs of _crime scene_ tape.

“A murder,” Phil reads aloud, scratching the line between silence and noise, as the news anchor appears back on screen and the live feed continues in the background.

“Not far from here too,” Zoe comments, looking up from her work.

 _Not far from that cafe, either._ He nods. “Yeah.” _In fact, practically opposite._

There’s a catch of silence as Phil stares at the screen, watching the news unroll. Lights flash, blues scintillating and whorling; people swarm, passing in and out of one of the houses; he watches a detective step under the tape and then a police officer shooing crowds away and then the writhing mass of London’s streets.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. Sorry. Evening, Zoe.” Phil waves behind him, and leaves.

-

When he gets home, he goes straight to his laptop, and opens the BBC home page. He finds the news story in the local news station.

The prime suspect is an unknown male, approximately 25 years of age, Caucasian, missing. Was seen entering the residence by an eyewitness between 3 and 7AM, hours before the emergency call that alerted police of the crime at 7:37. Not seen since. The eyewitness was letting in their pet cat, and does not know the exact time. Police urge anyone to come forward with any information they may have regarding this man and his whereabouts.

(A photo is attached: an artist’s sketch, based off the witness’ questionable account. The man is average: brown hair pin straight and shadowing his jawline, brown eyes wide and defined, mouth large. Nothing of interest. There is a jolt of recognition, perhaps, but nothing more than his weary brain working. Phil studies his face for a few seconds before scrolling on.)

No access to the crime scene has been given to the press, for obvious reasons, but certain details are known. There are no signs of a struggle, nor of a break in. The victim was positioned at their computer, their credit card held in their hand. Police are unsure if this statement is linked to the killer themselves, a motive, or if it is a statement at all. With a bit of searching, Phil finds out how they were killed: a laceration to the jugular, the action described as “clinical and expertly executed”. The crime scene was cleaned thoroughly after the killing, and the cut stitched up - so, at first, it was hard to tell they were dead at all, or what the cause had been.

Phil checks back at the BBC. The victim’s name has been published. _Toby Stanford._

Phil closes the page and pushes his chair away from his desk. Unnerving though it all is, he’s hungry and has some more photos to edit.

-

The photos he took this morning are printed out on glossy paper, and he studies them now, the TV murmuring away in the background. It’s the same story: _Unknown Killer, Unknown Killer, Unknown Killer._ The tale has, somehow, shaken the country horribly; a gruesome murder that looked seamless in execution, done by a man in his twenties, in the capital city; a murderer whose DNA was found at the scene, but whose way of retreat is a mystery. The DNA has not shown up as a match on PD records. No footage shows the killer on the street. No one saw him leave. No one knows how long he was there for.

For the most part, he isn’t invested in the tale. It doesn’t concern him; it’s just another tragedy taking over the screen. He listens to it the same way he listens to most news: with transient empathy and curiosity. There’s nothing more to the story than what he’s given from news reporters, so what’s the point of wishing for more?

“The police can now confirm that they believe the killer did know the victim, Toby Stanford.” The reporter has a tight lipped way of speaking, but the news makes Phil’s stomach turn. _How horrible it is to be able to kill someone so close to you,_ he thinks.

The heat is slowly dissipating with the sunlight, but his hands are still slick with sweat as he flicks through his photos. Shadows are starting to hang low, sweeping over the floor before his eyes as the day crawls along, draped off the window sill; he looks out the window as his eyes wander, and sees the scorching red of the sunset.

Returning to his photos, Phil studies the throng of people with distracted interest, before recognising the taxi he had watched from the second floor of the cafe. Parked on the curb, it’s squashed up against the rush. It’s a licensed one, he can see now. He flips to the next photo, sees that a passenger door is open, and grabs his magnifying glass to closer study the tiny outline of its passenger. Their clothes are protecting their face from the storm; Phil can’t quite make it out, so he flips to the next one, his pulse throbbing in his fingertips. The next one, and the next...

Phil almost drops the photo.

With his face turned directly to the camera as he casts his gaze around - to check no one is watching him, or following him, Phil will suppose later - and his expression contorted by shock and fright, the killer stands in the London deluge, and is suddenly less of a lost man than Phil thought.

Phil does drop the photo. And his magnifying glass. And rushes to find his camera. Urgently, he throws away the case, and goes through the gallery until he finds these photos. Muttering, “fuck, shit, please, please, _please_ say it is,” his voice scraped and broken apart by his breathing, he checks the timestamp. _6:59am, 25/06/16_. It fits the timeline, if he entered the house between 3 and 7AM.

_He’s a murderer._

This man is a murderer, and Phil is holding the last proof of his existence, the last sighting of him, in his hands.

What is he supposed to do with this? The breath builds in his lungs just from the thought of this - this secret with bared teeth behind his closed doors. From luck alone, he’s slashed this mystery open, and doesn’t know what to do with the mess.

Phil looks at the next photo, and the next. He steps into the taxi and it drives away. The last thing Phil can see him do is pull his hood down and his scarf up, so his face is almost completely hidden. It’s no wonder the taxi driver hasn’t come forward: in these photos, the killer doesn’t look like the killer at all, not when the only pictures the public have of him show him looking completely different.

Phil sets the cards down.

He switches off the TV. He refuses to call the police. This is his chance to cover something important, something big, and the longer he gives himself to get a head start, the better. It’s not normal for journalists to evade the police and pursue a probable murder, probably, but he’s given up on normalities.

(Is this impatience? Is this bad morality? Or is this just what’s left from a life of being let down?)

In the photos, the taxi sits still for bare seconds before driving off, its back to Phil’s camera; it disappears into the throng, but Phil had, by some token of luck, decided to zoom in, and the number plate, company and car number are laid out in fine quality before his eyes.

Phil grapples for his phone - drops it - scrapes it off the ground. A quick search shows the taxi’s location - and the cafe - is only a few blocks away from the murder site. Down the road opposite, turn left, and you’re there.

 _This is it._ Phil’s breath catches, excitedly, in his throat, and the possible consequences of this set a grenade off in his stomach. The dangers descend over his mind. He could be arrested, or made redundant, or in danger.

But it’s not enough to put him off.

Phil checks the timestamp again. And again. After he’s certain he’s not delusional, he shoves the photos off his lap, stands, and goes to his laptop.

It only takes a few seconds to find the company’s phone number, a few more to still his shaking fingers, and then the number is dialling on the screen. He starts pacing up and down the room, falling into shadow and out again, stepping over the various wires and notebooks scattered over the floor. The tone sounds, over and over, mismatching with his footfalls.

Phil squeezes his eyes shut and wills his voice to stop quaking; his spine becomes a lightning rod.

“Hello, ABC Taxis?”

“Hello, I took a cab with your service earlier today, and I think I might have left my keys in the back seat?”

“Okay, sir, do you know the car number?”

“Yeah, it was 335,” Phil reads from the photo he snatches off the table. Proceeding to clutch it to his chest, he falls back onto his chair.

“Name was Dan Howell?”

“Yeah, Howell.” Exhilaration fires through him, the name sweet and venomous on his tongue. _I can’t believe I’m doing this._ The number is staring back at him - he knows it’s right. There’s only one name they could be giving him.

The phone operator is quiet a moment, and then checks the location his car was taking him to. Phil bites his tongue and notes the address down, the letters jumbling and finishing with long tails.

“Yes, that’s the place,” he says.

“Okay, we’ll check the car for you as soon as possible. Should we contact you on this number?”

“Yes, please. Thank you for your help.”

Phil hangs up. He blocks the number.

Easy.

Phil tears off the piece of paper showing the address, gathers the photos together. Turning to a fresh page in his portfolio, he places them on it and slams it shut. He goes to bed.

-

By noon, Phil has finished two of his assigned stories. The sky writhes in masses of grey through the ceiling to floor windows. His leg bounces against the side of his desk, and it won’t stop.

“You’re doing well, Phil,” Zoe says from over his shoulder, after dropping off a mass of prototype papers for Lucy to edit.

“Thank you.” Phil shrugs off the compliment and doesn’t watch as Zoe exchanges a few words with Lucy and proceeds to leave.

The other story he finishes by two o’clock in the afternoon. He doesn’t stop for lunch; he grabs a sandwich from his bag and eats it as he works. Crumbs congregate in his lap and he doesn’t brush them off. His work is hurried, his jaw taut; he’s agitated, but focused, eager to finish, and to finish _fast_ . When he groans in frustration and stands up to head to the loo - _wasting time_ \- Mark raises an eyebrow at him, tilts his head, _you alright, mate?_ Phil grimaces, _yes, fine,_ and it must be convincing, because Mark turns back to his desk.

Sending off his work, Phil opens up a search engine and heads to the major news websites. The - his - story has reached the front pages, now, as everyone scrambles to solve the mystery: of the body’s odd positioning, of what it all means, of the world’s disappearing killer.

Phil is, in that respect, one step ahead. He is the last person to have seen the killer as the killer, he is the only person who knows where he went, he is the only one who knows his name. He has proof of it all.

 _Dan Howell_.

Phil doesn’t dare look him up at work. If anyone were to see him, or track his search history (Phil lets himself be paranoid, giving himself the taste of the action movie life), it would only attract suspicion.

He finds news articles written in desperate verbatim. Only a few facts are known: between 3AM and 7AM, Toby Stanford, the address, the positioning, severed jugular. The killer: brown hair, wide eyes, fringe, askew mouth. Murderous tendencies.

On the loose.

A few things have been guessed by experts: no sign of a struggle or break in, so the killer was known to the victim. The killer was an expert, perhaps a serial killer, or a doctor. It was not a crime of passion. He may strike again, but if he does, it will be on a friend or relation, they believe.

He also scrolls through the transcripts of inconsequential interviews. Programs are eager for a story, digging their claws on any shred of meat they can find; however, the story is still fresh, and little can be determined. Phil finds a video without a transcript, and hastily plugs in his headphones.

“We are still searching the crime scene as we speak,” says a local constable. She’s red in the face. Vibrant tape struggles in the wind behind her: _warning, no entry_. “A fingertip search.”

“Who do you have on the case?” The reporter’s pony tail blows in the wind, the skin on her neck is pale.

“On the scene, we’ve got DIs and Chief Inspectors, CSIs, experts from Scotland Yard, and forensics. The body has been sent off for an extensive post-mortem.”

“And what are you looking for, exactly?”

“DNA, mostly. Until we find that, we’re very much lost. The only genetic information we’ve found so far is partial, so we’re hoping to find something more substantial. The killer did a diligent job of clearing his mark from the scene.

“We’ve also got a team looking into the victim, their personal life, close friends, coworkers, anything that may point us towards the identity of the killer.”

“Should members of the public be worried?”

“We believe that the killer is thorough in both the preparation and the actual murder. We think only close friends and people known to the killer are at risk, and we are working hard to work out who that may be. If members of the public see or hear about anything to do with this man,” the artist’s sketch appears on screen, “we urge them to come forward and speak to our staff at the station.”

“What’re you looking at?”

Phil jumps, the rise in his shoulders sharp. He looks behind him to find Lucy peering over his shoulder, and he sighs in relief. “Don’t _do_ that.” He yanks out his headphones, and scrolls the page up so she can see the title.

Squinting to read it, she asks, “They found anything new, then?”

“No, no.”

“Think you could make a story out of it?” She offers him a gently teasing smile.

“Not at the moment, I couldn’t.”

“It’s interesting stuff.” She thinks for a moment. “Anthony down in Crime and Local Affairs got hold of some crime pictures. Not to publish, of course, but he has contacts. Email him, ask for them.”

“What?”

“He was bragging about it at lunch - well, no bragging is the wrong word, I suppose. He was very excited about it.”

“Why are you telling me to ask for them, though?” She can’t know anything. Don’t be ridiculous.

“Other than the obvious, we’ve barely covered this. Look into possible political views the killer may have. Talk to Zoe, see if you can interview some police, some family and friends of the victim.”

“You’d think she’d let me do that?”

Lucy shrugs. “I can’t be sure, but if you’re well read on the matter, why not? CALA is quite busy at the moment, considering it’s only Anthony.”

An inquisitive look passes across his face. “Since when?”

“Since Tom went on paternity leave.”

“Oh, right.”

“I’m sure Anthony would love some extra help. But only ask for the photos for now. Build your case, and we’ll go to Zoe tomorrow.”

Slowly, Phil nods, swivelling acute angles in his chair. “But tomorrow’s Friday.”

“Yes.”

“Zoe’s hardly in on Fridays.”

“Well, you’ll have to be quick, then.” Lucy smiles at him. Phil grins back.

He sets about writing the email straight away, concocting it in such a way that it is made clear Phil wants to help with the story. Anthony is enthusiastic and lacking scruple: by adding in that Lucy told him to ask, Phil is confident he’ll get the photos.

Sure enough, minutes later a notification appears at the bottom of his screen, and Phil clicks on it before it can disappear.

_“Hi, Phil! If Zoe says yes, then I’d love some help from you. I hear it can be very boring on the back pages - it would be a win win, no?_

_“Here are the photos. I would warn for gore, but they’re really not that shocking at all. No blood, no obvious wound. It’s all quite creepy, but interesting - take a look.”_

Giving the text a cursory glance, Phil opens the files.

The room is not what Phil expected. Where he’d expected it to be modern and swish, it is homey and old fashioned; the desk is not plastic or glass, but made of a polished, dark wood. The chair is a basic swivel one, and behind it are two shelves, shoulder to shoulder, grimly bearing tonnes of dog eared books. Some are of classic literature, others on art movements, but mostly he sees books on sociology. A rug is splayed on the floor, a mountainous wrinkle in the material from the wheels of the swivel chair.

In terms of the corpse, it is just as Anthony said. With his open, staring eyes, legs crossed, and his elbows rested on the desk - credit card casually clasped between thumb and finger - Toby Stanford looks alive. Hours before this was taken, he was alive. The black screen of his computer can just be seen in the reflection of his eyes.

Like Howell, Stanford was young. His clothes are simple - a pale blue t-shirt, cargo shorts; his blond hair is naturally tousled, but shines with grease: the sign of a man too caught up in his work. In the news, Toby Stanford has been described by loved ones as _loving, dedicated, passionate, we will miss him endlessly_.

The collection of photos ends with zoomed in shots of the severed jugular. The two edges of skin are sewn together with invisible thread, its thickness unbelievably slim. Pale and clear of any blood, the wound must have been cleaned thoroughly before being sewn back up; the needle was left at the scene, broken in two, sterilised. It was a basic sewing needle. Another photo, and the thread is cut to be salvaged and analysed later; the skin curls apart. Toby Stanford’s skin was dead, and couldn’t heal itself.

The very last photo is an image of the credit card - the setup was carefully dismantled by forensics. The card is Stanford’s own, nothing obscure or unexpected. Fingerprints can’t have been found on it, or the public would know. The killer did a meticulous job of ensuring Toby Stanford would appear alone in his death.

No. Not the killer. Not The Killer. Dan Howell.

“Anything interesting?” Lucy calls over.

“What?” Mark asks.

“Phil’s looking into the Credit Card Killer,” Lucy explains, standing and walking over. The phrase was coined by a news outlet overnight, and for now it is the only way to name the murderer.

“Oooh, daring.”

“Hardly,” Phil tells him. He looks up at Lucy, minimising the photos for her benefit. “Nothing we don’t already know, really, just in visual form. Can I print these off?”

“Sure.”

“Thank you.”

Waiting until Lucy is back at her desk, Phil opens the files, prints them off, and makes a beeline for the printer. He hops from one foot to the other as the ten photos print. Warm on his fingers as he picks them up, Phil folds them in half and tucks them in his bag. He glances up at the clock.

“It’s five o’clock, I’m gonna go.”

“Okay, see you tomorrow.” Lucy waves a hand at him, flicking her hair back over her shoulder. “Good luck with that case.”

“Yeah, see you tomorrow, mate. Don’t go near any serial killers.” Mark winks at him.

“Appreciated,” Phil deadpans, and hurries out of the door.

-

Although he considered waiting until nightfall before heading to Howell’s place, several things stop him from making that decision. Firstly, if Howell is indeed still there, the time of day won’t change that - if anything, he may still be at work now, making it safer for Phil to visit. Secondly, a stranger breaking into someone’s apartment in the middle of the night would cause much suspicion. Lastly, and most simply, he is too impatient to wait any time at all.

He types the address into maps, and is relieved to find it is only a ten minute walk from his workplace. Unlike Howell, Phil cannot afford taxis, and the traffic is heaving. Catching a bus at this time would be almost impossible.

The pavement is bone dry, displaying no signs of yesterday’s onslaught of water. The sun catches in his eyes, and he squints into it until it dips behind a skyscraper. Phil listens to the local radio as he walks; they’re interviewing someone else, someone from Scotland Yard. Most of it is stuff Phil has heard before, so he tunes out. As he comes to the entrance of the building, though, one sentence captures his interest.

“We are taking this man’s disappearance as an admission of guilt. Do not approach him. He is dangerous, and may be armed.”

Howell’s apartment must be empty. No one would stick around and wait for the hounds to find them. Surely?

The apartment block is typical of London: balanced on the edge of a square, with no garden or decoration to it’s name. With a towering five stories of beige brick and glaring windows, it is not run down or particularly unkind, but Phil is still uneasy as he trips up the steps to the lobby. The stone is abraded by pebbles, the edges fraught with tough moss.

Beside the number 20, written in black marker and re-taped to the surface several times, is the surname _Howell_. The letter boxes for each are arranged in the rows below.

He does not have to buzz for entrance, to his relief, and Phil pushes open the door. Once inside, he sets off up an echoing stair case, the cream paint of the space shining with the wall lights. The air smells stale, but not pungently so. It must be the heat - it makes anything smell like rotting meat.

At the third floor, Phil turns right along the corridor. It’s a long walk down the corridor, and he stopped running a while back, but despite this the roar of his blood persists in his ears, a brittle ache in the back of his legs. He comes to a stop outside door 20.

It looks innocent enough. The spy hole is at his eyesight, and Phil shivers.

He keeps walking until he reaches door 21. He takes a deep breath, musters a smile, and knocks.

After a few moments, an elderly lady opens the door to him, and he makes his smile sweeter. “Hi, sorry to bother you, but I’m a friend of Dan’s, and he asked me to get something from his flat.” He jabs a thumb back down the corridor.

“And you don’t have a key, eh?” He estimates she must be in her late fifties. Her hair is dyed brunette, and is pulled into a bun at the back of her head. Her voice carries a jovial hum to it, like it’s clipped by the edges of her welcoming smile.

“Exactly.” Phil nods sheepishly.

She clicks her tongue. “Typical Dan. He’s all over the place, that lad. I haven’t seen him since yesterday morning, though.”

“He’s staying at mine.”

“And he made you get something from his apartment? You poor boy.”

“It was a deal. He’d go and buy dinner, I’d get the laptop from his place.” The lie comes from nowhere, but he’s grateful for it all the same. He shuffles his feet on the linoleum floor, hands deep in his pockets.

“Hmm, I’ll let him off the hook this time. I’ll just go and get that spare key for you, love.”

“Thank you very much.”

Pulling them out of his pockets, Phil stands with his hands clasped in front of him while he waits. When she emerges again, keys jangling and hanging from her hand, he takes them from her, saying again, “Thank you, sorry for the disruption.”

“It’s no bother, m’love. Have a good evening.”

“And you.”

The door shuts, and Phil weaves the keys through his fingers as he makes his way back down to Dan’s place. On the keyring are three keys, one for 20, one for 22, and one for 23.

He manages to get the key in the lock first time, and it turns easily. The door swings open. He doesn’t want to cross the boundary, but he does.

Inside, the flat is filled with a darkness like sewage, with stitches of light wriggling through the curtains. It smells of absence. Heat, clumsy and weary, lingers in the air; it’s been trapped in here for a day or two. Phil’s hand scrabbles across the wall until he finds a light switch. He flicks it on.

He stands in a living room. Going off from it are three doors. A number of prints are hanging from the walls; the carpet is a beige-green, worn and scratched and stained in numerous places; a sofa is backed up against the wall, with an arm chair at an angle to it. The fabric is old, but not in disrepair. The coffee table beside them is empty. There is a small TV, but the screen is dusty, and Phil can’t see a remote anywhere. The paint on the walls is bleached, but not peeling. A shelf is propped up against the wall, and it slumps under the weight of two scented candles and a pile of books. Walking over, his footsteps are too loud, ricocheting off every surface as there is no other noise to contend with; he presses a finger to the shelf, and it comes away pasted with a pall of dust. Hurried, he wipes it off on his jeans, feeling uncomfortable for rummaging through someone else’s belongings, and decides not to touch anything else. He scrubs at his fingerprint in the dust until it disappears.

Heading into the first intersecting room, Phil comes across a kitchen. The room is minute, with space enough for a small, square table, two chairs, and one row of worktop. As he walks, the plastic of his soles makes a peeling noise on the tiles. Dirty mugs, cups, and plates are stacked in and around the sink. Phil wrinkles his nose, and shuts the door behind him.

The next door leads into a bathroom, and Phil finds nothing of note, except there’s no shampoo or shower gel, in spite of the tacky rings of soap he finds on the shelf in the shower.

The last room is the bedroom. It is the busiest room in the flat: drawers yanked out and hanging, barely, from their fastenings; the wardrobe is half empty, the gaps where piles of clothes should be are teeth missing from a skull; the covers are bunched up at the base of the bed. It is so messy, and yet the air is painfully still. Phil stands in the doorway, hand still on the door handle, and breathes in the beginnings of dust.

A computer sits on a desk in the darkest corner. Phil shakes the mouse to wake it up, but a lock screen comes up. Beside it is a notebook, two thirds of the pages ripped out, and a credit card with Howell’s name on it. Brow furrowing, Phil acts on a whim and stashes the credit card in his pocket.

A mobile number is written on a piece of paper. Phil rings it, but it goes to voicemail.

Of course.

Phil walks back to the corner of the room, and stares. And stares.

This is his next lead. This is the address given to him by the taxi company. It has to lead him somewhere, or his excursion will have been pointless. Already, he can feel the sacrifices he’s going to make for this - for now, they are faint ghosts on the horizon, but if he pursues it, they will approach, and they will encroach, and they will multiply. He needs to stay in control. He needs to think. He needs to find a damn thing to help him along.

The impatience hits him, then, and he dives back into the room. He pulls back the covers of the bed - nothing - falls to his knees and rummages under the bed - nothing - jumps up and pulls out the remaining clothes - nothing. Under the desk is a pile of papers, and Phil disrupts it, sending the papers out in a fan across the carpet. Half way through searching, he pulls out a leaflet for a B&B approximately thirty minutes outside the city. Folding this into quarters, Phil tucks it away in his pocket. The key presses into his thigh through the pocket of his jeans. Another search offers a spare key to the flat, and he pockets this, also.

There’s the slam of a door.

Phil could have _sworn_ it came from the room next door. The living room. But he looked, and it was empty. Wasn’t it?

Panic swarms in his throat, and he rises to his feet. The papers go flying in the sudden breeze. The mess is lost to the chaos of the room. Running back into the lounge, he finds there is no sign of a disturbance, but the terror has him surrounded now, and he has to get out.

Phil pulls the door shut. At the far end of the corridor, a shadow flits out of view, but he is sure it’s just one of the residents.

 _Maybe the action movie life isn’t for me_ , he thinks to himself, and his laugh is shaky. Shoving the keys through flat 21’s letter box, he hastens down the length of the corridor; with two hundred metres between him and the apartment, with the sun glaring down at him, he relaxes.

-

He forgets about the credit card and key until late evening, when he starts getting undressed for bed. He goes to place them with the rest in his portfolio, before deciding against it. Following a few minutes of searching, he uncovers a packet of A3 plastic wallets, and slips the photos, leaflet, and key inside. Placing this in the back of his portfolio, he leaves it by the bedroom door and continues getting changed. He thinks he should feel satisfied at his work, but instead he is topping up his Oyster card and paying all his bills earlier than he normally would.

-

“Phil, I’m really sorry,” Zoe begins, and Phil already knows what’s coming. He sits still on a chair in Zoe’s office, Lucy beside him, with his portfolio caught between his legs. “I just can’t let you move departments like that, especially at such short notice, and without a good enough cause!”

“Anthony said he’d appreciate the help,” Phil offers, subdued.

“I know.” Zoe sighs. “But we need you where you are, Phil. We aren’t here to exercise personal interest. This is your job. You work under me, and I work under my bosses.”

“I know.”

“I suggested Phil pursue this, Zoe,” Lucy admits. She twists her hair up into a ponytail before continuing, “He had a real interest in the case, and he’d completed all his work already.”

Neck prickling and teeth grinding, Phil stares at his tangling fingers.

“That may be true,” Zoe allows, “but I just can’t let you do that. You have no expertise in the field. And I trust you, you’re a great writer and an aspiring photographer - I do hope one day we can offer a job that’s right for you.” Her wheedling does nothing to quell Phil’s anger. “But this is a case with no substance. Everything’s already been said. Even if I could let you, I wouldn’t, because it would result in wasted words, wasted work.

“I appreciate your enthusiasm and dedication, but there’s really nothing I can do.” Zoe settles back in her chair and offers him a consolatory smile.

“Okay. Thank you anyway.” Phil grimaces at her and stands up, hands clutching his back, his head spinning a little. As he turns, he can see her TV again; it’s on, and he watches the subtitles scuttle across the screen.

“ _No new information has been found concerning the murder of Toby Stanford. Police urge the public to -”_

“It’s basically five o’clock, Phil, go home. There’s nothing you can get done with only twenty minutes left.”

“Yeah, thank you.” Phil’s voice is bland; he stares ahead of him as he walks out, and when Lucy calls after him, it takes a few seconds for him to register her. He eventually turns.

“I’m really sorry,” she says. “I thought it would help.”

“It’s okay.” Phil places a hand on her shoulder. “You did your best.”

Nodding, she smiles, as if consoled, and sets off for her office. Phil sets off home.

He feels like he’s in a trance. Stupefied. Not from disappointment, exactly, more the opportunities now he’s been turned down. No matter the circumstances, he’s not letting this case go. He’ll leave town tomorrow. He will. He’ll hunt Howell down on his own, he’ll write the story down, he’ll take photos, and he’ll get the break he needs. The whole experience should be cathartic for him, too.

Shoving open the door to his house, he tumbles in and slams the door behind him. He’s met with the same, wafting sense of abandonment. He’s used to it. Except, now, it kills him. He desires noise, sound, the scream of disturbance that accompanies life.

His blood is pounding in his head as he packs. He’s not sure what to include, so throws in what he finds. His camera goes in the rucksack last, perched on the top of his clothes and book. Phil hesitates before fastening the bag shut, but he shakes it off and ties it tight.

That night, he barely sleeps, but he’s too invigorated to feel exhausted.

-

He gets a tube out to Cockfosters, then walks to the bus station; the B&B is in a small village in Greater London, and, following the instructions he finds on Google Maps, he manages to get the bus to take him almost to its doorstep.

It’s a small, neat place, with a painted sign and lace curtains in the windows. In the garden are lines of fruit and vegetable plants; a hanging basket strains in the wind beside the front door. Phil catches sight of a cat slinking around the corner. Some sort of climbing plant, perhaps ivy, has started to grow in the guttering, but the house is in such good keep otherwise - fresh paint, tiled garden path, no weeds, mown lawn - that Phil decides it must be deliberate.

The door is propped open with a doorstop, a cartoon-like dog filled with beans, so Phil pushes it open and composes a look of politeness as he enters.

Inside, the lobby is spacious, the towering ceiling cut into sections by the inclining stair cases. Photos hang on the walls. Under a line of hooks and keys, a wooden desk fills the space, and a woman Phil estimates to be in her late forties busies herself with the newspaper and a pile of folders. At the sound of the door opening, she looks up; she smiles, welcoming him, and beckons him over to her.

“Hi, what can I do for you?”

“Um,” Phil begins. _Shit_. He hadn’t planned out at all what he would say, and he can hardly come in here, pry about Howell’s whereabouts and leave, can he? Shifting his shoulders and twisting his back, he rearranges the hefty bag on his back. An idea hits him, and he rushes to say, “I’m looking for someone, a Dan Howell? He dropped his card, I found it on the pavement just outside.” He rummages in his pocket - and yes, thank fuck, he finds the credit card and pulls it out, showing it to her.

“I see. Young man, brown hair, fringe?” she checks. Phil shrugs.

“I didn’t see him.”

“The name rings a bell,” she thinks aloud, and shuffles over to the log book. She flicks back a page, “ah, yes, he checked out a few hours ago, sorry.”

Disappointment slumps in his chest, but he tries to ignore it. “Did he leave any contact details?” Phil tries again.

“Yes, a phone number. I’ll write it down for you now.”

“Thank you so much. Do you know roughly which way he was heading? I may be able to catch up with him.”

“Not really, no. He only stayed a night. Asked about buses and coaches to Reading, I think.”

“There’s a coach station?” Phil asks, pricked by surprise. It’s still possible to find him.

“Yeah, about five miles down the road. It’s very handy. They go as far as Oxford, I think.” Sliding a scrap of paper with the phone number on it, she says, “There you go.”

“Thank you again.”

“No problem. Anything else I can do for you? Do you need a room?” She looks to the bag on his back.

Phil smiles. “Ah, no, I’m fine for now. Thank you again for your help.”

The excitement he feels is alien, but he feasts on it. He’s at the start of this. His perseverance has paid off.

Dodging the cat on his way out, he rushes to the bus station, and hops on the one going to the coach station. He sits at the back, staring out the window, slicing harmlessly at his palm with the credit card. His impatience is notable, but with it he has purpose, certainty, so he can withstand it; his expectations hum in the back of his head.

The coach station is quiet when he arrives, caught in the lull of midmorning. Litter trails along the pavement, shadow bounces under the metal shelters.

Walking up to the front desk, Phil catches the attendee’s attention by saying, “Excuse me.”

The man looks up from his computer, eyebrows raised. Phil shrinks a little. “Can I help you?”

“Yes, sorry, have you seen this guy around at all today?” Phil gets up a picture of Howell on his phone and offers it to him. He leans forward to study it, then shakes his head.

“No, I haven’t. Why?”

“Ah, good,” Phil acts a sigh of relief, even as his stomach sinks: here ends his luck. “We’re meant to be meeting here, but I suddenly realised he might have got the wrong coach time. He’s not very organised, see. But, if you haven’t seen him, that’s probably a good sign.”

“I’ve only been on duty a couple of hours.”

“I doubt he’ll have arrived more than a couple of hours early, he’s not _that_ bad,” Phil jokes. “Thank you for your help, have a good day.”

“No worries,” he says, and sinks back down in his chair.

When Phil is far enough away, he draws all the air out of his cheeks in one long exhale. His back aches. Clouds are rolling in, dark and heavy.

“Shit,” says he, and he sits down to wait for the next bus. He tries the number the woman left him: it’s fake, of course.

-

Facebook has never appealed to Phil, he uses it intermittently, but now he’s elbow deep in posts dating back to 2010. He has Howell’s face at ages 22, 23, 24 and 25 memorised now, after scrolling past years’ worth of posts, photos and statuses. Dan got a job working as an over-the-phone salesman for a company in 2014, fired from it a few months back; he dropped out of university in 2012; he celebrated his 21st birthday during a family trip to Las Vegas. Judging from recent photos - there aren’t many, as Howell’s social life seems to diminish in recent months - the artist’s sketch isn’t far off, save a few missed details: his mouth is askew when he smiles, his eyelashes are thick and his eyes are hooded, and his hair is naturally wavy.

Phil has a post open in another tab: it shows Howell at a club with friends, arms thrown around each other’s shoulders. His hair is longer, twisting around the middle of his neck. He is almost certainly drunk. And beside him stands Toby Stanford.

They were most definitely friends, the investigators got that right. Phil’s head is still buzzing from the discovery. He managed what no one else could, and he’s still reaping the benefits from it. The possibilities for the motive are still endless, but Phil believes he knows Howell better now. Perhaps they fought over someone, perhaps one stole money from the other - that would explain the credit card. It doesn’t matter.

When Phil finds him, he’ll find out.

( _And what will I do when I find him? Confront him? Risk my life? Stay at a distance and call the police? I don’t know.)_

By the second hour, Phil is bored. He finds Howell’s Tumblr, but other than random GIFs, there’s nothing of interest. His Facebook is merely a log of his good relations with friends, cordial acquaintances with family, and the struggles he has with employment. Phil thinks money could be a suitable motive, but he’s no expert.

He scours the news again, but nothing else is known. It’s only a matter of time until they find out Howell’s identity though, surely. Phil needs to maintain his headstart.

Clicking on Local News, he goes to Reading’s site, figuring he may be able to track Howell down that way. During his Facebook session, he learnt that Howell was born in Reading; if he’s targetting close friends or family, there may be another murder - an extreme possibility, but it’s still possible. His home ties also explain why he would want to return there.

Sure enough, Phil soon finds the headline BANKER KILLED IN OWN HOME. It’s a new story and isn’t on the front page. Phil eagerly clicks on it, and absorbs every word it has to offer.

_“Police are left puzzled after the body of one of Reading’s most successful young bankers is found in her home, with no signs of a break in. Family and friends are heartbroken._

_Cadence Collins, 26, was found dead in her bedroom at 9 o’clock this morning by her cleaner. It has since been confirmed that Collins died by asphyxiation in her sleep; however, no obvious signs of a break in have been found, leaving police baffled as to how the killer got in or out._

_For two years, Collins worked for the national bank HSBC, and her expertise with computers and mathematics made her career incredibly successful. Her work place has issued a statement of grievance and condolences to her family. Collins lived alone with her two dogs, both of which were found sleeping, undisturbed, in their kennels outside. When they couldn’t be woken, blood tests were conducted; it was found they had been sedated. This poses a solution to how the killer got in and out without raising alarm._

_“We are working hard to find the killer. As of yet, we have not found a weapon, motive, or means of entry and escape. It’s a slow process,” says local constable Andy Thompson, “but we believe we will find the answers to these questions, and when we do, the killer will quickly become known to us._

_“At this moment in time, we have no reason to believe this death is linked to the Stanford case in London. The MO is different; if it were a serial killer, we would expect to see a recurring method for murder. Serial killers often have a signature ‘move’, if you like, used to instill fear and create the illusion of omnipresence and power. The sedation of the dogs also suggests the killer was unknown to the victim. We hope to reassure the public with the knowledge that we do not believe this is a case of serial killings.””_

Phil stops reading. He leans back in his chair, biting his lip and tapping his desk repeatedly. Next, he re-opens Facebook, finds Howell’s page, and scrolls down the page at a ferocious speed; he gives each post a cursory look before moving on.

There.

There it is. “ **Dan Howell** , with **Toby Stanford, Cadence Collins, and 3 others.** ”

_He knew her._

Phil can’t ignore the similarities. First, Toby. With his long friendship with Howell. The credit card positioned in his dead hands. And now, Cadence. A banker. Another friend of Howell’s. No known way of entering for either murders, no DNA or evidence left at the scene. Fuck what the police think, Phil _knows_ this is Howell’s work.

If he’s pursuing this case - and he is - then he has to pursue this, too. He can’t just sit here, when he knows where his killer is and what he’s been doing. While he never imagined he would do this, while he never imagined that he would risk his everything, drop everything for this coincidence, he can’t imagine _stopping_.

Reading is only an hour away. If he leaves now, he could make it by 4PM.

Throwing his laptop aside, Phil rushes to his bedroom and repacks his rucksack; he runs to the kitchen, emptying the cupboards of biscuits and cereal bars. Back in the living room, he hooks his camera over his neck. He opens his portfolio and flicks to the back page, figuring it would be useful to have all his evidence and photos with him, as he thinks it’s unlikely he’ll be returning any time soon. If he has these, then his whole story will be prepared by the time this ends. Except -

Except.

Phil stops dead in his tracks. The sudden stop throws his heart up into his mouth. Blood rushes past his ears like a whirlwind.

The photos are gone.

Phil definitely printed them, and they were definitely _in this wallet_ , but he shakes everything out of it and he can’t find them. When he shakes his whole portfolio, nothing is dislodged.

Fingers shaking, he takes his camera out of its case and clicks through to the gallery. The photos are still there, he discovers, but the relief comes with a bitter edge. He left the portfolio behind, but took the camera with him. He can’t have lost the photos, so where did they go?

Except.

By this point, his paranoia has allowed him to become familiar with the possible risks of this task he’s undertaken. He knows it’s possible that someone knows what he’s doing - he worries about it with every step he takes. He knows it’s possible he never put the photos anywhere different.

A new thrill overtakes him. A new fear. A new dread. He is aware of himself in a completely different way, his every boundary hardwired to discharge a spark.

If someone stole them - and someone must have stolen them - why? Who? It doesn’t make sense: Howell was halfway to Reading when he last saw them.

Maybe he got a friend to break in and take them. Maybe he’s part of a gang. But, say he did, how did he know when Phil would be out? And why didn’t he want to delete the photos from his camera? There were numerous times when the camera was left unattended in his flat while he went to work.

More importantly, how did he know the photos existed _at all?_ The thought makes Phil sick.

He can’t stop, though. There’s no point searching the flat, because he knows exactly where he left them. He can’t report it to the police, or let the fear faze him. Time is draining away, blood from a wound, and if he leaves it any longer, the case will dry up.

Shoving what’s left of his evidence in his backpack, Phil ties a jacket around his waist - just in case - and checks the door is locked twice before he leaves for the train station.

-

It only takes a bit of searching on social media to work out roughly where Cadence Collins lived. When he steps off the train - relatively empty, and quiet enough that he managed to catch a few moment’s sleep, too - he approaches a member of staff and gets directions to the street. Determined and steady, he sets off; a book digs into his back.

It takes him thirty minutes. His footsteps are fast and frantic, and with every wrong turn he takes, his pace increases. Against his back, his bag thuds and judders. The sky is a swirling mass above his head, full of light and cloud and searing blue; he turns his head away from it. Instead, he fidgets with his camera, flicking through his gallery; more than once, he lingers on the ones of that writhing crowd, that clogged vein of a street...

Howell was there - Howell was _here._

He knows he needs to search the area - for possible places Howell could have haunted, possible lodgings he might have stayed in. After that, he doesn’t know what he’ll do, what he’ll find, how he’ll find it. He’s trying not to think about it.

The house is easy to spot. A large, modern building, webbed in warning tape and guarded by police cars, a stream of people in uniform coming in and out; the rest of the street is desolate, in mourning. The asphalt is burning under the summer sun, black as anthracite, the rest of the concrete hoary and wrinkled. Around him, the area is silent, and he swears the wind carries the scent of anesthetic and dust. It’s humid. A storm cloud is working its way along the horizon. Phil takes off his jacket and stuffs it in his bag.

Of course, the house is off limits. Amongst his fervent wonderings, he’d managed to anticipate that, at least. He won’t find anything more here. As he knows the killer was here, this is a dead end. It’s the next part of the trail that he needs to find. He needs to carry on.

But for a moment, he stands, watching the flow of people; for a moment, he imagines what it would be like. To die. To kill.

(A coarse shiver mangles his spine.)

The people are silent as they walk, like an army of ants trailing in and out of the building. Around them, the street is still stunned into silence. It’s like a funeral procession. Phil grinds a heel into the pavement, and pivots.

Cadence lived roughly in the middle of town, so Phil gives himself the task of finding all the nearby hotels. It’s exhausting, exhaustive work. He feels eyes on him at every turn; part of him wants Howell to still be here, part of him wants Howell to be miles away.

The first hotel is a private organisation, too expensive for someone on the run, so he discounts it. The next, however, is cheap but tidy; a grand affair, with red carpets and saffron lighting. Phil walks towards the counter just as the staff switch over. The new secretary, a thirty-something year old woman with brown hair pulled into a bun, greets him with a sticky smile.

“Hello,” she says. Her voice possesses an odd, soft cadence. “How can I help you?”

“Hi, yeah,” he exhales, taking a step forward and smoothing down his shirt. “Oh, this is so embarrassing, but I think I left a memory stick in my hotel room. I checked out a few hours ago,” he explains, the lie a thorn growing out of his front teeth. He guesses that Howell must have moved on by now, what with another body in his closet. “Oh, I do hope it hasn’t been cleaned yet…”

“Nothing has been handed into lost property.” She purses her lips - not unkindly, but as if she doesn’t know how to approach the problem.

“Could I search my room? Would that be possible?” Phil offers. “It’s just, that memory stick is really important to me and my work, and it’s quite vital I find it.” His hand goes to the back of his neck. “Oh, this is all my fault, I shouldn’t have been so careless in the first place. I’m such an idiot, I’m so sorry.”

“Not to worry, sir, I’m sure you can go and check. If you checked out this morning, there won’t be another resident in it just yet. What was your room number?”

“Ah, well, that’s another embarrassing thing. I’ve tried, but I can’t for the life of me remember,” he admits, pulling his mouth into an ashamed line.

She smiles at him. “I’ll check our register for you. How long did you stay for?”

“Only one night.”

While she clicks keys on the computer keyboard, Phil twists his foot around and chews the inside of his cheek; the last thing he wants her to do is ask for his name. Howell might have used his real name, for this place isn’t a part of a chain and would be hard to track down, but Phil can’t be sure, and doubts he would dare to.

“I’m guessing this is you, Finley Waller, room 11? That’s the only one who fits the description.”

“Yes, that’s me.” Phil pulls his bag closer to his back. “You could have _asked_ me my name,” he jokes.

“I could have, but I like working it out myself.” She laughs, and Phil joins in. Handing him the key card, she says, “I can give you ten minutes.”

“That’s plenty, thank you.” Phil takes it, bows his head to her, and walks up the staircase. Underneath the thinning carpet, he can feel the hard press of wooden floorboards. The banister twists up into the wall, which is pasted with a deep red wallpaper. Howell’s room, room 11, is on the first floor; Phil slots the card in the door, hardly waits until it flashes green before he puts his shoulder to the varnished wood. And pushes.

Inside, it barely looks inhabited. The room is banal and typical, despite it’s almost byronic decor; the main colour is red - it’s on the pillows, the duvet, and the curtains. A door is in the far corner, where the ensuite must be. In the other corner, beside the window, is a wide, long shelf, to be used as a desk. Under it is a bin made of metal mesh.

First, Phil checks the bathroom. The shower is empty, and the sink and surface wiped clean and dry. It smells of the hotel’s air freshener. He flings open the cupboard doors and takes the room apart, blowing every crack and crevice open to the size of a small universe. He finds nothing. Just a putrid petal of rust growing in one corner of the radiator. Back in the bedroom, the cramped wardrobe is bare of everything but dust and a screw that has fallen from its place; the sheets on the bed have been pulled taut, and the pillow is plump, as if shaken wildly. Phil falls onto his knees and runs his hand over the carpet and the wooden slats of the frame, but finds nothing.

Not that he expected to find something. Not necessarily. A flame of hope flickers in him, but it’s turning sour with each passing second. He can’t divine how much optimism is appropriate for this; can’t decide how conducive his situation is for success.

He stands up, brushing his knees down, and approaches the bin with a certain level of hesitance. Still, he tips it upside down and rummages through the rubbish.

Phil furrows his brow. The only thing in it is plain paper: no food wrappers, no water bottles, no scrap paper with doodles or words. Just plain paper.

Of course he wouldn’t find anything. Howell is a _killer_ , a killer who leaves the body behind and yet, somehow, leaves no trace of himself. The police don’t even know his name. Except for that one betraying photo, there is no scent trail to follow. The last thing he would do is leave something so incriminating behind - he’s meticulous, diligent, and cunning.

He sighs, and sets about scrunching it up. Spurting in from the window, the sunlight butters his fingers as he lifts up his hands. But, as he scrunches up the third piece, something catches his eye, and he stops. He smooths the paper out, and holds it to the light. He squints, and twists the paper more, and finally can make out what it is.

Faint and spidery, two words are impressed on the paper.

“ _f_ _inwal12@_

_rwdafy0609”_

It’s a username and password. It must be.

Howell was careful; he kept the paper with the login on, and disposed of all paper that might show he was here or record what he did. And Phil got here quick enough to find it. Howell’s memory let him down on that front - if he could remember it, then he wouldn’t have to write it down. (Why couldn’t he remember it? It was only two words.) He took the risk, took the precautions, but Phil beat him. The thought sends a light red shiver down his spine. The hair on the back of his neck stands on end.

Remembering himself and where he is, he stuffs the paper in his pocket and hurries out of the room. At the bottom of the stairs, he throws the woman at the desk a smile, slides the key card onto the desk, and hustles towards the door, pulling his shoulders in.

“Finley?” she calls after him. He stops short. Slowly turns. Again, she smiles, sickly, her lipstick feathering, “any luck?”

“Ah, yes.” He reaches behind him and pats his rucksack. “It was in the bin, who’d’ve thought!” He chuckles to himself.

“I’m glad.”

“Thank you.” Phil turns again, the smile folding away into a fine line, before he remembers something. “Does there happen to be an Internet cafe nearby?” he asks her.

“Yeah, there is. Turn right out of here, then turn right again at the first road you come to. It’s just round the corner.”

He logs the information in his head, and dips his head. “Thank you again, you’ve been very useful.”

Phil leaves before she can stall him any longer.

-

The streets in this area of the city are old and empty. With shops chock-a-block, shoulder to shoulder, with their signs stuttered up and down the wall so they don’t overlap; the boards stretched across their area of the brick are clear and well kept, but the various repairs show in their paint. It’s the type of area that makes Phil a little ill (alongside seaside towns, with the open, vulnerable sky and ghost houses). The shop owners who sit at their tills are rarely visited, their homes squeezed into the flats stashed above. The pavements aren’t cracked, but peppered with gum and litter. The perfect limbo between population and desertion.

Phil follows the lady’s instructions, and only sees one person on his way - an old man, hunched into his jacket and scarf despite the clement weather, his face whiskery and disgruntled. Phil doesn’t smile at him as he passes. After a five minute walk, another road intersects the one he walks along, making a crossroad, and Phil turns right. Sure enough, sandwiched between a butcher’s and a salon, a little white sign with “Internet Café” peaks out. As he approaches, the sign turns into a shop front. Phil looks both ways before crossing, but there’s no point: no cars are to be seen.

The door shakes when he opens it.

There are three other people in the café: a young teenaged boy, with unruly ginger hair; a sixty-something man, who looks incredibly bored and pissed off; and the owner, a cordial woman in her fifties who wears a blouse and keeps glancing at her watch. Computers sit on rows of slouching tables. Phil counts about four rows in all, with five computers on each. They’re not disgracefully old, but the keyboards stick and when Phil selects one and shakes the mouse, it takes a while for the screen to load up.

The computer has Chrome, thank fuck, and Phil double clicks, closing the second tab when it appears. It takes a good five minutes to open the browser, click the “sign in” button, and for the login screen to come up. Finally, it does, and Phil is left staring at the “ _remember me”_ tab.

Using two fingers, Phil extracts the piece of paper from his back pocket, looking around him before doing so. No one is paying attention to him, so he lays it in front, against the screen, and types in the letters. He barely looks at it once, though: he had been reciting it to himself over and over on the way, timing each letter with each fervent step.

Phil holds his breath when he forces down the enter key. _It’s just the damn computer,_ he assures himself, as the loading symbol whirls round and round, _it’s just being fucking_ **_slow_** _._

Finally the home screen flashes up, flickering before settling. Phil sighs in relief - too loudly, and he glances around again. No one has noticed his outburst. He turns back to the computer and stuffs the paper back into his pocket.

Howell didn’t save any bookmarks or change the avatar or _anything_ , obviously, so what Phil is now looking at is barely apart from the one he looked at before. But the implications are so much broader, and they rattle his heart against his rib cage.

Phil hovers the cursor over several buttons, deliberating what the hell to do, before finally he removes his fingers from the mouse and holds down _ctrl + h._

The site loads, and loads, and loads, and he breathes in, and out. And breathes in.

Dan Howell’s web history is laid out before him.

All of the searches date back to yesterday. They were made minutes apart, at most.

Meaning: nothing has been deleted.

But that doesn’t make _sense_. If Howell is a skilled, precise murderer, whose tracks are untraceable and whose methods are perfectly calculated, why would he neglect such a glaring giveaway?

Phil doesn’t have time to worry about that, or about what it implies. (That Howell isn’t as well practiced online as he is in death? That he’s not as invincible as the police say he is? That everyone fears he is?) Howell’s search history is _right there in front of him,_ and that means answers are, too.

A lot of the words are random, it seems to him, with motives Phil doesn’t understand the meaning of. _Artificial Intelligence, Hyperinflation online, Digital money making._ Along with those terms, Phil finds a forum - some conspiracy site - titled _Government money making scheme?_ but all messages on it have been deleted.

The top of the list is most interesting to him. A web search, and a transport site, and the words _train ticket to Rochdale_.

That has to be where Howell’s gone. It _has to be_. Not just because it’s obvious, or the most plausible conclusion based off the information - but because if it’s not, Phil will have reached a dead end that will cut his career in half.

He scratches the back of his neck, foot attacking a botched rhythm on the floor. Something isn’t quite adding up to him. This new information, the presence of it, isn’t easily slotting into the image already constructed in his head. It can’t be this easy, can it? The doubt gnaws away at his thought process, turning his brain to dust. Phil chalks it up to adrenaline.

Deleting the search history so no one else can find it - which is maybe illegal, but as if Phil gives a shit at this point - Phil pushes his chair back. The legs grind on the concrete floor. He grabs his bag, and sets off for the door.

On his way out, he sees two men looking at him oddly. The fact they are watching him at all is peculiar, but Phil is sure of it. Wherever he steps, their eyes follow; intermittently, though, darting to him and away again, sweeping their paths away off the floor. Their beards are trimmed and uniform, their hair cuts close shaven, their eyes masked by hats. They are so indistinctive that Phil can determine nothing about them.

He tears his eyes away, and continues out of the door. He can feel eyes on him again - which is ridiculous, because he can’t think why anyone should be watching him. No one but Howell would know what is on that computer -

But what if they want to mug him? Oh, God, that would be…

His heart works itself up into a frenzy - and shatters in his chest. The sting of boiling blood can be felt in his fingers and in the base of his spine. He walks a little while down the road. He looks both ways before crossing, ostensibly to check for traffic, but he knows nothing is coming.

The two men have left the shop, and are traipsing in the other direction.

Balancing on shaking knees, Phil pulls himself into a stop. He forces the air out of his lungs, as he forces the worries to leave his head. He needs to stop panicking like this - it’s time to act logically, and sensibly, and with control.

Those two men left awfully quickly. It doesn’t seem like they were there that long at all, but perhaps Phil just missed them entering. He was caught up in his computer. Even so, he is suspicious. He shivers. For the rest of the walk, he can’t help but wonder if any of the people he passes know who he is - how far can he wander before getting trapped?

-

It takes him twenty minutes to walk to the train station. He can’t afford a cab, but with maps and some signposts, he finds his way easily. By the time he takes the final turning, his feet are tied down by a dull ache. The station stands stark against the sky, which is withering into black as evening closes its jaw. It’s busier now, with the end of rush hour, and to buy his ticket Phil has to queue behind three others at the ticket machines. Soon after he arrives, two more people join the queue, hovering a little way behind him - Phil can’t complain, he’ll take any space he can get. The station is bustling with noise, and Phil is surrounded by more people than he has been for a while. With all these people around him, the secret is pushing at his seams, yearning for attention, threatening to spill its poison. They could all turn on him in a split second, and ensnare him in a net of pointed glares and questions jostling his ribs.

He won’t tell anyone. He’s not that easily swayed. But his feet tap frantically at the tiled floor, and he keeps twisting his neck to look around - side to side, down, up to the web of roof above him - as his hands push deep into his jean pockets. It’s driving him insane. Slightly.

(Can you be _slightly_ insane? Because he’s not mad. He just thinks he might be.)

The queue moves quickly, and soon enough Phil finds himself standing in front of the machine. He taps swiftly through the options. The route will be complicated: a train back to London, then the Tube across to another train station, and finally a train up to Rochdale. After deliberating a second, Phil decides to settle only for a ticket back to London. The trip will take him over three hours, and it’s getting late; it will be better to go back home, and leave early in the morning. He’s itching to keep moving, but he knows it will have to do. His fingers rub together until they go red, and he selects _finish_. Whirring, the machine prints off his ticket. He snaps it off, grabs his change, and walks away to find his platform.

He heads right, but his platform isn’t on that side of the station, so he turns back around; he sees the two people who were behind him in the queue walk up to the machine, look at each other, shake their heads, and walk away.

Again, he feels watched. The secret prickles, sharpens its claws. He aches to run away, but he must get home, he must continue like everything is normal. He’s sure it must just be paranoia. He’s been standing up for a large majority of the day, and the edges of his brain are pieces of alcohol-soaked cotton wool - sore and putrid and sopping. His body is riddled with niggling pains.

He heads straight for his train, grabbing a coffee from the store on his way. Finding a lonely seat in the most neglected carriage, he nestles into his jumper; he falls asleep before the train leaves the station, and he only wakes again when a mother of one shakes his shoulder, _excuse me, but we’re in London now_. Phil pushes himself up with his elbows, nods, and thanks her. His camera is still enmeshed in his fingers.

-

His flat feels eerily cold and isolated when he returns, despite him only being gone a day. He left the curtains open, so the night leaks in; a fine gossamer thread of silence is woven through the air, so he can feel a twang of resistance with his every step. His bag still on his back, he goes into every room in the place. All his possessions appear to be in order, but still he ensures he locks the door fully. Considering whether he should call in sick now, in preparation for Monday, he pulls the curtains tightly shut. He decides against it. He doesn’t know how long he will be gone, and he wants to avoid lies he will later have to back up. If he loses his job, so be it.

He goes back to the front door and checks the lock.

As he checks the front room again, he slumps into his steps. He’s been out for many long hours. Fatigue is washing at the coast of his brain, but he can evade that for now; his hunger, however, he can’t waylay. Taking one last look around the living room, he goes through to the kitchen. Yanking the strap off his shoulder, he drops his bag at his feet. He pours a handful of pasta into a saucepan and puts it on to simmer. As he waits, he checks the news on his phone, one ankle crossed over the other.

His saliva turns to black oil. His head spins. His edges and dimensions fold away into nothing, he is grounded only by the news in front of him, his entire being anchored by the shock wave emanating from the phone screen.

“ **ANONYMOUS TIP LEADS TO POLICE BREAKTHROUGH IN ‘CREDIT CARD KILLER’ CASE**

**An anonymous tip gives police the DNA match needed to identify the killer of Toby Stanford, three days after the case began.**

_Police have announced that DNA fragments, found at the crime scene in south east London on Wednesday, belong to 25 year old Dan Howell, after an anonymous tip lead them to the culprit._

_The package was left outside Scotland Yard, and was found by DI Holdings, one of the head detectives of this case, this morning. The exact contents of the package have not been disclosed to the public, but it is known to have had a typed note attached, claiming, “This is the man you’re looking for.” Police confirmed the note’s statement to be true after noon today, and were also able to match Howell’s appearance with the eye witness account from the night of the murder._

_The police force and Scotland Yard have released information on Howell for the public’s use, and urge the public to be vigilant. If seen, Howell is not to be approached by members of the public._

_Howell is 25 years old, recently unemployed, and was a close friend of Stanford’s. He has no police record, but it is believed he may have been involved in Credit Card theft and amateur hacking. At this moment, Howell’s whereabouts are unknown._ ”

An image is attached to the article - a photo Phil saw while browsing Howell’s Facebook.

The pot boils over, and Phil walks over and removes the lid in a daze. He tries to be rational about this, but it’s not exactly easy. As he grapples with recovery, a pipe - buried deep in the building - clangs, and hesitant fear trundles through his veins.

Fingers gripping the work surface, he breaths out and eases his weight forwards. This news is not devastating, but it is not ideal. No longer is he the only one looking for Dan Howell; the revelation is not just his any more, and he will have to look harder for a good story. He has a head start on the police, at least, but he is just one man. The police have officers and the public looking for Howell. They have their experts and their resources and their technology. It is not a fair fight.

But then, perhaps Phil has the advantage. He is only one man: he is inconspicuous, not suspicious, he can move without being spotted. Also. Also. Howell is just one man. They match. Maybe it takes a lone man to find another lone man. If they both fall under the radar, then they both sit on the same underground level. As long as Phil stays here, beyond all attention, and thinks like Howell - easier, now he’s on the run, too, sort of - then it must lead him to what he seeks.

Phil throws the pasta into a bowl, sits with his back coiled tight into an arch as he pours over the rest of the article. One hand guides miscalculated forkfuls of pasta to his mouth, the other scrolls down the page. The rest is boring, a number of quotes from police officers and Scotland Yard, more warnings to the public and ways to contact authorities if Howell is seen. Nothing suggests they have any leads yet about where he is, but surely it is only a matter of time before the B&B is found and searched, or the link between Stanford, Howell and Collins is spotted, and when that happens, Phil’s journey will be at risk of being cut short. And then there’s the issue of the anonymous tip…

Who would know that it was Howell? Who would want to remain anonymous through it all? Who would want to flush Howell out, but protect their identity at the same time? It’s a whole new part of the equation, of the mystery surrounding Howell, and it doesn’t make sense.

Phil hardly knows Howell. He’s searching for this target, but it matters little what it turns out to be: glittering treasure, a threat, a corpse. The larger picture is building up, though. Howell’s form is expanding - growing, from a single silhouette of a man, to a silhouette swamped by fuzzy patches that reach the vaults of the stormy sky.

 _Credit card theft, bank accounts_ . Some sites say Howell is definitely a thief, others keep it in the _reportedly, possibly_ column. This piece of news, at least, is new and helpful. It half explains the arrangement of Toby Stanford’s demise, and Collins’ involvement, and the search history he found in the internet cafe.

Phil can’t help but theorise. Stanford and Collins were close friends of Howell’s, but then they found out about the credit card theft, and had to be silenced. Another friend - maybe Stanford or Collins’ significant other, maybe even Howell’s - knew what happened, and felt obligated to help the search. Maybe Howell is hounded by guilt, and wants to be found, but his pride is too great for him to just come back with his tail between his legs and his wrists held out, ready to be cuffed.

Howell didn’t delete his search history, but it was on an account not associated with him at all; Phil only found it by accident, after he was able - somehow - to follow his movements. If Howell had wanted to silence his friends, he would have succeeded: if not for that anonymous tip, his identity would still be unknown. His criminal secret would still be secret.

  
Comforted by the knowledge that nothing more is known about Howell, he drops the bowl into the sink with a clarion clink, runs water over it, and takes himself and his backpack through to his bedroom. Tired out of his mind, he tries to look for the missing photos again. All he succeeds in doing is making his home even messier. Giving up, he kicks off his shoes and goes to bed fully dressed.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the hunt for dan howell is well underway - but what will phil find at the end of it?

“So where are you heading?”

Thirty minutes into the three hour journey, the man opposite him tucks his paperback Dickens book into his bag, puts his hands in his lap, and leans forward to speak to Phil. Phil pulls out his headphones, and tilts his head forward. The man smiles kindly - his skin is nut-brown and creases around the expression - and repeats himself. His cheeks are prickled with grey hairs.

“Oh, Rochdale,” Phil tells him. There isn’t time to deliberate: the words are there, at the forefront of his mind, and the letters collapse in perfect order. It has been so long since he’s spoken to someone. He desperately needs some normality and distraction; it’s like his brain is constantly being demolished, the noise a postlude from the bellowing lungs of an organ. _His_ bellowing lungs.

He pushes his phone into the back pocket of his bag, shrinks away when his fingers catch the edge of the plastic wallet.

“Ah, yes, I know it. Been awhile since I’ve been, but I remember it all th’same. Small but charmin’. Can’t think why someone as young as you would want to go there, though?”

“Family” is the first thing that comes to Phil’s mind, so he stays with it.

“Of course, of course.” The man nods. “I’m stopping at Manchester, meself. Headin’ back ‘ome. Me name’s Tony, by the way.”

“Phil. Where have you been?”

“London. My daughter’s just moved in there, so I came to help. I also used the opportunity for me own sightseeing, of course.” He taps the side of his nose and winks. Phil indulges him, and smiles.

“See anything interesting? Or is London overrated?”

“I ‘ad dinner with the Queen, lad.” He chuckles warmly, low and resonant. Phil rolls his eyes in a cordial fashion, casting his gaze to outside, where the last boroughs of Greater London are vanishing into farmers’ fields and perforated hedges. “Nah, but I did see a number of museums ‘nd galleries, didn’t I? I ‘ad a great time.”

“So you have an interest in art? Or history?”

“Both, son. The two are very much interconnected.” His fingers interlock to demonstrate.

Phil nods, saying, “Yes, I agree, but not everyone sees that.”

“You can’t blame ‘em. The two are their own things, too, of course.”

“Of course.”

“And you, lad? You look like you could wield a paintbrush, if you tried.”

Phil snorts. “A camera,” he corrects him, “I couldn’t paint for my life.”

“Professionally?”

“...Kind of,” Phil concedes. He kicks his bag under his chair.

“A good enough answer.”

The countryside is fully built through the window, now, with the sky a lilting blue as the sun rises above the crests of the hills. A field of sheep flies by, and then a field of horses, and a glittering stream follows.

The conversation settles into silence, and Tony pulls out a newspaper, flicking it open. On the front page, the bold title _CREDIT CARD KILLER CAUGHT BY ANONYMOUS HELPER_ fills the space, accompanied by a photo of Dan Howell. Phil stares at the front page, not sure how he should act as he squints with the effort of reading the serifed font. Tony must catch him looking, as he shuts the paper again to look at the headline.

He gives a rueful smile. “Terrible business, isn’t it? His family must ‘ave been devastated as it is, and now they gotta live with ‘is closest friend being the killer.”

“It’s truly awful,” Phil agrees. “Are they any closer to finding him?”

“Not by the sounds of it. You’d’ve thought ‘aving ‘is name would ‘elp, but he did a darn good job of covering ‘is tracks.”

“He’ll be found though, won’t he? Everyone’s looking for him, and if he’s travelling, he’ll have left a trail. People will have seen him. Someone will find him, even if it’s not the police.”

“I’m not an expert, but I’d happily agree with you there, m’lad. I worked in the force for many years, and I’ve learnt that no one is invisible. You ask someone if they know the name, they’ll say no, but the face... They know the face. You just gotta know where to look.”

“You were a policeman?”

“Yay, the very same. Got up as high as detective inspector, I did, before I had to retire.”

“And now you’re an art history fan.” Phil smiles, entertained.

“That’s true, yes.” His face falls abruptly, his voice sounding more harrowed and older than it has up to this point. “I saw my good share of endings, I did, during that job. I guess I could never escape.” He pulls upwards into a smile again. “But what can I say? I enjoy it. It doesn’t make me sad - I enjoy it! Art is a lot prettier than crime scenes, and endings are easier to accept when they came and went long ago.”

Phil nods, slowly, a pathos the size of an ice cube stirring in his chest. “That makes sense.”

Tony picks up his newspaper again. “Steer clear from that side of the woods, lad. You can’t ever free yourself from it.”

Phil doesn’t know what to say to that, (he is sat in a train at seven in the morning, racing towards that side of the woods, and he is looking for the monster), so he settles with, “Noted.”

Tony doesn’t speak to him again, caught up in his newspaper, but bids him goodbye when they reach Manchester Piccadilly station. Phil tips his head to him, yanking his bag out from the gap between the seats and the floor. He buys a cereal bar from the vending machine, slips a free newspaper from the pile into his bag; from Piccadilly, he has to walk for about a minute to catch the tram, and he sits with his shoulders folded into a box and his hostility taped to his sleeve. Four stops later, the tram pulls in at Victoria Station, and another minute of walking takes him to the Northern line to Leeds.

Every accidental lock of gazes sets his heart juddering: an aberration of a pulse that sends tremors through his body. Noise dilates, forming clouds around the station, the harsh fractions of chatter scuttling up the walls. In the middle of it all, he stands, waiting, braced against the sun’s glare; above him, the ocean of windows warps. Hooked on one wall is a massive clock, and as the time hauls itself past him, pressure builds in his head. An unexploded mine.

A squeal of brakes, and his train is in front of him. He steps on, finds a seat. Bringing the newspaper back out of his bag, he reads, and doesn’t take in a word of it.

Thirteen minutes later, his train departs from the station, and he is left behind on the platform. The same platform as Dan Howell was stood on less than a couple of days ago. A digital clock hangs above his head, and his fellow passengers leave, and a piece of litter catches on a wooden post, and Dan Howell was _here_.

A slab of concrete leads him out from there. Beyond the station, the market town is ashen, frozen in time with concrete and pavement. Billboards’ posters are peeling off like old skin; there are ridges and wrinkles in the asphalt; a few trees push through the rock in green delusions. A few people appear and disappear into the mazes of walls and warehouses, and cars trawl past, but Phil feels completely alone as the clouds billow and the wind bellows.

He’s only a day behind. Now, he needs to think like Howell. It’s his only chance, and it’s an advantage of sorts. Phil walks down random streets, hand tapping the outside of his thigh, and he worms his way into the beginnings of the town centre.

If he were on the run, he wouldn’t stay in one place for long, not until he reached his destination - and he wouldn’t head there directly. If Howell took the train here, then he must have continued in some other way - maybe on foot, if he was crazy, maybe in a car, or on a bike. No matter how he did it, Phil is sure he is no longer here.

So that takes him on to the next goal: find out where Howell is. To do that, he should look for how he got there, or where he stayed before he left.

But as Phil splits the town into chessboard squares, he finds only lonely, expensive hotels; he crosses sections off in his head, and as he rules off each place, he finds himself seriously doubting that Howell would dare stay somewhere at all. Since the identity leak, (that’s what Phil believes it to be: a breach in Howell’s security, somehow, a betrayal, but of what trust Phil does not know), the whole nation is lit up in search lights, all looking for the same face - Dan Howell’s. Surely no one would rent a room to stay in, not when their face is shown and their details recorded - even if the details are faked. If Phil were on the run, he’d never make himself that vulnerable to the outsider’s eye. Lodgings and rooms are out of the question.

That leaves him with some mode of transport.

Phil meanders through the town, taking random turns and alleyways as he fights for an idea. Even his music, which he so often listens to, is turned off. He needs the silence, needs any noise to be his own. Whatever he does next, it will have only a slim chance of success.

The houses and stores he passes stare blankly out at him, cold and flat and dark. They offer him nothing, so he ensures he offers nothing back. But amid the lost causes, one place stands out to him, and Phil stops in his tracks to stare at the sign from across the road.

“RENT A CAR” is painted across the sign in a primary blue; below it, a yard of gravel and beat-up rides. The cars make a perfect couple of rows, except for one empty space between a jeep and a Mini. In the far corner squats a small, concrete hut, and there is a flicker of movement in the grimy window.

Phil sets off deliberately for the small hut at the back, crossing the road with just a quick glance each way; he’s powered by another burst of hope, gunpowder sprinkled across his chest that is now burning brightly. Howell doesn’t have any other forms of transport. Phil hasn’t seen another rent a car in the hour he’s been wandering the streets. Rochdale isn’t small, but it isn’t large either, and there is only one car missing in the establishment. At this point, Phil is willing to bet his career that the space was made by Dan Howell. His certainty has grown from his desperation, but he can’t shake it; this once, at least, the belief is founded.

A blunt, loud noise, the gravel crunches like egg shell beneath his feet as he heads across the yard. Behind a nearby warehouse, a crack shows in the depth of black cloud. The door, ajar and touching the ground beneath, gives way when Phil shoves at it with the palm of his hand. The room that it reveals is bare, almost austere, in decoration: a revealed brick wall, a couple of uncomfortable chairs pushed to the wall, opposite a desk and old computer. Keys line up along the wall above the desk, hanging from nails. Sat a small way behind the desk, with patches sewn to his jacket and strands of silver slashing the white of his hair into fractions, the owner has one hand at the back of his neck and a hat sloped on his head. The door bashes the wall, and he looks up, and smiles at Phil; his smile is yellowing, but genuine.

Phil finds himself surrounded by the smell of grease and the sound of a vintage radio, feet stood on dusty asphalt, without a plan for what to do next. His smile falls open. No words come out, at first. He watches the man stand up and lean forward on the table with his fists.

“Hi,” he manages, and he must be getting better at the whole lying business, because next he says, “I’m doing a column on local companies for college, is it okay if I please take a second of your time?”

“Well, of course! Did you say college?”

“Yes?”

“You look a bit old for college!” he declares, chuckling. Phil feels himself starting to sweat.

Phil laughs with him. “Yeah, I get that a lot.” His hand goes to the back of his neck, and he yanks it back and sticks it to his side.

“It’s a good thing, trust me. Just pray you look like that forever.” The man winks. “So, what do you need?”

“Oh, just who you are, what you do, how you do it.” Acting on a moment of sudden inspiration, Phil pulls his phone from his pocket and poises, as if ready to take notes.

“Well then.” He folds his arms, balancing his hip on the edge of the desk. “I’m Earl Martel, and I run a car renting business.”

Phil may as well as write it all down properly. “For how long? Have you been doing it, I mean.”

“Oh, God, I don’t know.” Earl’s gaze rises to the top right corner of the room. “Ten years, I think.”

“Is it successful?”

“We get a lot of tourists around here, especially in the summer. We’ve got a lot of lovely country roads, and people want to drive down them. I supply the cars.” He shrugs, and smiles again. “It’s simple, but I appreciate it.”

Phil nods, pausing to write it down. His foot is shuffling impatiently in the grit and dirt. “So, how does it work?”

“The customers come in, pay five bucks up front, and then - well, come round here, and I can show you.” When he beckons with his hand, Phil hesitates a second before walking around the other side to stand beside him. Earl goes to the computer and pulls up a register with columns and rows, some filled in. “I note down their name, phone number, the number of days they want to rent it for, the date, and the registration number of the car they’re using. All of it’s here.” He steps aside, and Phil comes before the computer screen.

“It’s a lot of information,” Phil says, letting out a nervous laugh.

“You got that right!”

“He’s your only customer at the moment?” he inquires, jabbing a finger at the last name on the list: Gabriel Webb.

“Correct. How’d you know?”

“Only one space missing in the yard,” Phil explains. He studies the screen for a moment, considering what the best way to approach this is. “What did he look like?” He bites his lip.

“Erm, brown hair, tall, didn’t like strangers too much I don’t think. Why, lad?”

“I thought I recognised the name,” Phil says, and shakes his head. “But I don’t.”

“Nah, he definitely wasn’t from around here. Came by here a day ago. Odd, too: he insisted on paying for five days up front. Normally customers pay the rest after their trip.”

_He paid all upfront? Did he not expect to return, then? But why did he pay?_

“Speaking of which,” Phil says, driving the conversation forward as his brain ticks away, “what’s your security system? Do you track the cars?”

“You bet we do!” Retreating so Earl can edge past him and get to the computer, Phil watches as he opens up a map with flashing circles on. Most are in one place - the yard, Phil’s guessing - but one is alone, north west of the business. It’s unmoving - whatever Howell’s doing, he doesn’t plan on using the car at the moment.

“Sorry to ask,” Phil says, pulling his eyes away to glance behind him, “but could I please have a glass of water?”

“Of course!”

A door is stashed in the far corner, and Earl disappears behind it. There comes the sound of running water clattering into a metal sink. Phil snaps a picture. The car is located in the middle of nowhere, on a road called _Scar Top_ , near a place called Stanbury. It’s almost an hour away from Rochdale.

“Here you go.” Earl returns and offers a pint glass to Phil.

“Thank you.”

“Got what you needed?”

“Plenty, thank you so much for your help.”

“My pleasure.”

“I must admit to you, Earl,” Phil begins, abashed, “that this trip has been somewhat of a double mission for me.”

“Oh?”

“I’ve been needing to rent a car…”

“Say no more,” Earl cuts him off. “What do you fancy?”

“I’m not much of a car man, I just need a ride,” Phil tells him.

“The Mini, then. How many days? Normally it’s five quid a day, but I’ll do two fifty for you, as you’ve been so nice.”

“That’s really kind of you, you don’t have to -”

“It’s nothing. C’mon, how many days?”

“Three,” Phil decides, after a moment’s thought.

“Brilliant.”

Phil pays for his car, receives the keys; he thanks Earl, his heart screaming in anticipation from the chasm of his chest, and leaves in a car down the road which will eventually lead him to Howell.

-

Phil drives in silence. As soon as he leaves Rochdale, he knows it is the last sizeable town he will encounter on this trip. That figures: if he were running away - and, he supposes, he _is_ \- he would avoid all the civilisation he could afford to lose. The endless heaths of the north are the perfect haven, with a network of roads stretched far apart in a cat’s cradle of crumbling concrete, and people who keep to themselves and work the earth for a living. It is a place best experienced at night, Phil decides, and he half wishes for darkness, just to catch a glimpse of mist tangled in the bushes and sprigs of heather, to see the flickering, lonely lights of isolated homes on the flank of the hillside.

The area is bucolic in a way he’s never seen before. The heart of the countryside, the villages he cruises through have waist-height walls of mortar and stone; one of the first places he passes through has a canal, the settlement hanging off the curve of the hill. Falling into various states of disrepair, the roads are peppered with loose gravel and suffocating weeds. Bodies of empty water are buried in the carved valley. The place names are bizarre, with silenced consonants.

It takes him an hour to arrive in Stanbury. He still has no clue what to do when he finds Howell: detain him, somehow, or call the police? But who will believe him? And who could help him? Back home, in the cities, the word is electric, but Howell ensured he was well clear of the danger zone before the secret erupted. There is no logical way to approach this. There is no clear way of how Phil can get out of this unscathed. Still, he can’t stop pursuing.

Stanbury’s buildings are grey. That is the best way to describe them: gaunt and strict and grey. Sloping tiled roofs, corrugated iron doors, and misty window panes are opposite petite cottages of smooth, contrasting stone and stout chimneys. On the shoulders of the houses, though, are arrow heads of colour. A play park fits into a slip of vibrant green grass, boasting a view of a reservoir and a bleak, fragmented hillside. On each street, trees and foliage and huts and houses are sandwiched together. Along main street, he spots a public house named _Wuthering Heights_ , its sign painted emerald green.

Scar Top road is squeezed between a wire of feathery trees, accompanied by a toppling brick wall and a wooden fence; the trees drop from the picture, leaving the sides bare save for the expanse of water that makes another reservoir, and the stumbling curve of slope on each side.

There is nowhere for a car to park.

Phil drives all the way along it, but catches no sight of Howell’s discarded ride. The road is hardly wide enough for two cars to travel side by side; either side provides no cover but the dewed points of grass. Wherever he is, Dan Howell’s car isn’t here. He must have disabled the tracker and left it on the side of the road. The car could be anywhere.

Seeing no car approaching from either direction, Phil slows the car to a stop. He leans his head against the steering wheel and takes several low, heavy breaths.

“God. Fucking. Damnit.” He slams the heel of his hand against the dashboard.

The car could be anywhere, Howell could be anywhere. It was never going to be as easy as following a flashing dot on a map. Phil doesn’t know how he got here: driving through different parts of nowhere, miles north of home, following a shoddy picture of a map and a misplaced hope through random routes of road. He can’t believe it’s only been three days since this began.

The reason he’s here sits on the passenger seat beside him: a rucksack containing a camera and a plastic wallet, notes written in pencil, train tickets, a credit card, and an empty space where the photos of Howell should be. Phil looks from the bag back to the view in front of him, fingers wrapping on the steering wheel. He can’t abandon his search now. He’s _so close_ to finding Howell - less than twenty four hours separate them, unbelievably. This isn’t a trail that’s had days to rot away. This is a chase that’s had hardly any time to begin, and Phil’s already so near the end. He can _feel_ it, somehow.

His only hope is to keep searching. There are few roads in this area of land. Only one direction Howell could have possibly gone. Hence, he should keep going. If nothing comes of it, at least he could get some good photographs.

The road doesn’t change as he travels along it. Fields of pigs and sheep sectioned by more brick walls streak by the window on one side, with the reservoir water muddying and becoming covered by algae on the other; he passes lorn houses and a stone, arched bridge. Estuaries of gravel paths, stoppered by shut gates, tail off the road - paths that lead to nowhere noticeable. On one horizon, storm clouds are gathering. The sun goes behind a cloud. Scar Top Road changes into another lane, and still Phil keeps his engine running.

He doesn’t know what he’s looking for, but he has nothing to do but hope he’ll know what it is when he happens upon it.

As it turns out, he does.

When he sees the lane, he’s just passed through the last spot of focused civilisation he’ll see in a while. The countryside ripples out away, the landscape blotched with browning heath. The shadows seem almost plum in colour.

It is less of a lane and more of a beaten track, two ribbons of pale stone separated by grass, hemmed in by more brick wall. Its destination Phil cannot see, except that it twists off into the hillside. Pointlessly, he indicates before turning and setting off down it.

Not far from the main road, he comes across a parked car. In a rare space of empty verge it sits, tucked away as much as possible. Its wheels are askew, facing different directions.

Phil looks behind him. The road is empty as far as his eyes can see. The grey of the clouds is abysmal, darkness burrowing farther and farther into the sky, and with its arrival, the storm has repelled all life. The tangy, metallic scent of rain smothers the ground, spiralling up in dust clouds as he moves. When Phil opens his door and swings it shut behind him, the noise ricochets off into the empty space, splinters of sound that he imagines could very well reach the peaks of the hills before echoing back.

Phil rubs his hands together before he reaches out for the door handle. He hesitates, brings his hand back. He looks around him again. He hisses air out between his teeth, then gives in, and yanks the handle. The door obediently opens under his grip.

Phil’s hand falls back to his side. He can’t quite believe it, that it would be that easy. But here he is, with Howell’s escape vessel waiting patiently for him, unlocked and unguarded.

Howell must have decided the car would be a giveaway if he kept it with him. The tracker was removed, to make the search harder, and then he had disposed of the car in, it seems, the most caring, least destructive way possible. Following that, he had set off for his destination, a destination that is currently undisclosed to Phil. That’s what must have happened.

_Why is it unlocked?_

Phil closes his eyes to calm his thumping pulse. For an on-the-run criminal, Dan Howell sure is careless, reckless - or impossibly cunning. Half of him feels like this is a trap, that a bullet will lodge itself in his shoulder, or his chest. But he keeps looking around him, and there’s nothing to see but the storm clouds and the meandering cattle.

If this isn’t a trap, then that must mean Dan Howell is just clumsy. How does someone who leaves doors unlocked and searches in their internet history manage to perform a murder described as “clinical” and “expertly executed”?

Hand resting on the car roof, Phil leans forward through the driver’s door and inspects the car. It takes him no time at all to find something of note: a pile of slips of paper and a phone left on the driver’s seat. When Phil picks them up, a shiver punches through him. After shuffling through the pile and reading each one, the shiver turns into dread and realisation.

The first page is a note, scrawled in pencil on lined paper: _i’m innocent._ Next, two taxi cab receipts, one for 6:59, the other for 6:50. One to Toby Stanford’s street, the other from it back to Howell’s apartment. Both in Dan Howell’s name.

Nine minutes is hardly enough time to commit a murder, even for someone as “expert” as Dan Howell is supposed to be. The dread hardens, pressing onto his shoulders, as the true nature of the situation he’s fallen into makes itself known to him - fingers drumming on its arm and its eyebrow cocked, _you weren’t expecting this, were you?_

Picking up the phone, Phil slumps against the car. It’s an older model, he notes, black and with a number of scratches on its exterior. _Fingerprints,_ Phil thinks, as one of his shaking fingers presses the on switch, _they’ll want to take fingerprints for evidence._

He’s not sure what he’s looking at, at first. It takes a moment to calm his racing head, to stop his sight from swirling round and round. Anchoring himself to the place is like fighting against a gale force wind: he manages to stand still, just about, but he rocks and sways, and he could give way any moment.

It’s a conversation. The lock screen shows a screenshot of a text conversation. Phil reads it three times for the words to sink in, and once more to make sense of what it all means.

“ _dan._

_dan can you come here please_

_there’s someone in my house_ ”

Toby Stanford sent those texts Wednesday morning, at 4:37AM. Dan Howell’s replies come at a later time of 6:46 - a time, Phil knows, with a sinking feeling in his stomach, that was too late.

“ _toby?_

_toby?_

_shit_

_i’m coming_ ”

On the floor, in the footwell, is another, final scrap of paper; it’s scrunched up tight, a discarded piece of rubbish, but Phil lowers himself down on weak knees and picks it up.

“ _i was too late. is that a crime?_

 _you know, it feels like it is._ ”

Phil lets the car take his whole weight. He perches on the newly empty car seat, head bowed, shoulders slouched; his hand goes loose and the paper barely clings to the pads of his fingers.

Of course, the reliability is questionable. The evidence is tenuous. It could have been faked. Phil doesn’t know much about illicit work, but a receipt and a text conversation could be manufactured for someone’s personal needs. Something in his head is telling him that he _should_ believe it, that he _needs_ to; Phil searches for the reason, grapples with the warring logic of his brain, and comes back with his hands empty.

If this is true, and Dan Howell is innocent, then it means someone is framing him. It means Dan Howell found something or did something so unspeakable, he is being driven into isolation. It means Dan Howell is losing. It means Phil could end up with the same fate.

It’s hard to take in. It’s only been three days, but Phil spent all those hours fixated on Dan Howell and his guilt. In spite of being a total stranger, the case had morphed into Phil’s vendetta. Even with the reason for the contrary resting in his grasp, it is hard to just accept. What the contrary _means_ is hard to accept. ( _What did he find? Who is doing this to him? What is their next step? What is mine?)_ It would be easier to forget all of this, and to seek out the cold-blooded killer Phil came out here to find.

Another frightening question surfaces to bear its teeth, and it chills Phil to the bone.

_What was this note for? Who was this note for?_

_Is it a suicide note?_

But when Phil searches around, he finds nothing. He walks in a messy circle around the two cars, clambering over the walls, cutting through well-mown grass, and weaving around the copse of trees; nothing comes of it - no body, nobody.

If these notes weren’t a suicidal man’s last bid for justice, then what were they? Did Dan Howell hope to convince the police of his innocence while they searched, instead of pleading not guilty from a court of law? It’s likely, except Dan Howell left this with the knowledge whoever found it was following his trail piece by piece, not acting on a statement made by a member of the public who claimed to see him a day ago. So.

Phil doesn’t think about what it all means.

He returns to the car. Splayed on the dashboard is a map, opened on a page showing the surrounding area. Dan Howell is on it, somewhere. No matter if Phil knows who Dan Howell really is or not, he still has to find him. He still has to finish what he came here to do.

Phil grasps it, studies it. If he continues down this road, he will end up in a small village called Wycoller. With the sliver of signal he has, he gathers that it is a beautifully idyllic, rural village an hour’s walk away. Now, it is his next destination.

Phil bunches Dan Howell’s evidence together and walks around to the driver’s side of the car he came in. He stuffs it all into his bag. Foot pushing down on the accelerator, he manoeuvres his car onto the slip of grass behind Dan Howell’s. Next, he takes out his belongings, locks the doors, and drops the keys onto the grass by the front wheel. The next part of his journey will be travelled from the other, tracker-free car. Guilt nags at him for taking the rented car and not paying for it, but there is nothing he can do about it; if he drove it back, it would take him too long to walk back to Dan Howell’s car, and his intuition tells him that now he is in possession of evidence, whoever is after Dan Howell will have even more reasons to come after him, too. He’s calculated the risks, and this is the outcome he comes out with.

The keys are still in the ignition.

Everything about this feels so peculiar. The heart of the storm has come to join him, and the air is humid and prickling with electricity. A number of cars sped past him in the minutes he’s been here, oblivious of the story unravelling metres away from them. The key tag sways in the breeze.

He could still drive away from this. Follow the storm, go back the way he came. Leave the real storm crashing and burning behind him.

The keys are still in the ignition. Phil slips into the driver’s seat, drops his heavier bag onto the seat by him, and twists them. The engine splutters a few times before catching; the vehicle vibrates under Phil’s feet. The versions of truth are still battling in his head, but they’re irrelevant. He knows what he has to do.

Setting off along the track towards the main road, Phil has travelled no extra distance at all, nor has a great length of time passed - yet, it feels like a great change has taken place between him entering that track and him leaving it, so that the journey he is now on is completely different to the journey he set out to complete.

With no other vehicles in sight, Phil cruises along, wallowing in thought. He slows the car further in order to rummage around in his bag. It takes a moment, but his hand withdraws with what he came for: the first handwritten note.

Graphite smudges travel from left to right across the papers in Phil’s hand.

Phil looks to the note, up to the road, and back again. He swerves to give an oncoming car a wide berth.

A memory shudders to the surface, a piece of driftwood stock full of splinters and bouncing on the crest of the waves. Dan Howell clambering into a taxi, face torn so only fear and shock show through. And another: Dan Howell, using an online account to search for train tickets and neglecting to delete his search history. A conclusion: Dan Howell is not a man who wanted to run. He is a man who was forced to. The desperation and rash, rushed decisions show in his work, if one looks in the right places.

Someone who writes notes like these must have cause, an untold story. Phil can’t read these and think these things and subsequently think of Dan Howell as the cold-blooded killer he seemed to be. The figures don’t overlap directly. Which leaves him with the bare, cruel truth:

Dan Howell is not a murderer. He is just a man who has lost a friend and hasn’t been allowed the time to grieve. Dan Howell has had his life stolen from him, his being taken from him and moulded into a grotesque gargoyle.

Phil finds the phone. He wants to look at the text messages again. He shouldn’t, but he allows himself to, and the hopelessness and loss it holds makes him want to cry. Dan Howell’s last text to Toby is succinct but heavy: a decision turned into a promise turned into a ghost’s keepsake.

Phil eyes the winding road ahead of him. The hills are drowsy and lackadaisical in the dirtying light. He realises something: Dan Howell is still coming.

Toby Stanford shouldn’t have died. Dan Howell shouldn’t have lost him.

Somehow, this is all about Dan Howell. Dan Howell looked up _Artificial Intelligence_ and _Government money making scheme_ on an online forum, and police believe him to be a credit card thief. Toby Stanford knew Dan Howell, and he ended up dead. The credit card in his dead hand must have been a message to Dan Howell, or for Dan Howell. Dan Howell went to visit Cadence Collins - for help, most likely, with this trail Dan Howell had found - and she ended up dead, too. Phil found a trace of Dan Howell, and now he is miles away from home, clutching a dead man’s last words to his friend in his limp hand. It all comes back to Dan Howell.

Processing this in his head, Phil becomes very unsteady. Against his knowledge, he has stumbled onto the edge of a web, a network of lies and trip wires and prying eyes. Whatever Dan Howell found, in his pursuit of it, it may very well lead him to his grave. If Phil isn’t careful, it may do the same for him. It may already be too late.

No matter who Dan Howell is, Phil has to find him. There are still inhibitions. Dan Howell could be dangerous. But this note…

What Dan Howell needs is someone to believe in his innocence. By finding this note, the task falls to Phil.

Though these new findings provide confidence - the way an alternative, correct explanation does, with mist lifting and steady foundations and everything else - Phil’s vague ideas about the whole ordeal are, he knows, barely the beginning. In reality, he is a fly on a web. The perceptions he assigns to his new surroundings are nothing compared to the real scale of the thing.

There is nothing he can do about it. The only way to go is forward, the only thing to do is drive the distance to Wycoller. The drive is only six minutes - luckily for Phil, who has an insatiable impatience and the beginnings of hunger in his gut.

-

Wycoller is every bit as picturesque as its reputation claims it to be. Lush, green grass flocks in the space between the paths of uneven stone; the road he goes along runs parallel with a brisk stream, water turned chaotic in the downpour; a bridge, wide enough only for one person, skips over the brook, constructed from irregular slabs. In its course away from the mountains, the water flows over one of the paths; the flood worsens in the rain. On the other side of the road, the ruins of a building reside, living in the clutches of dark moss. The rain is thundering down in fierce torrents; the water bounces off the ground, the fine spray combining with the mist that rolled in with it. The sun fled with the arrival of the storm. This darkness, along with the nebulous mist and the winding paths and the impenetrable wall of trees, lends the village an eldritch demeanor.

It feels like the end of the road.

No one finds a place like Wycoller with the intention of carrying on from it. Tourists will come for the countryside and leave before the isolation becomes too much, but, apart from that, this place wasn’t made to be temporary. It’s too small, too quiet, too detached from the rest of the map for it to be a place someone passes through. If Dan Howell is here, then he is here to stay.

(Phil cannot tell how much of that statement originates from wishful thinking.)

-

Wheels dragging through the water, Phil drives through the town until he pulls up outside a corner store. The houses are the same, built with grey bricks and grey roof tiles and precise care; Phil thinks they would be more quaint, if not drowned by rain, if not puncturing ribbons of drab road. Other than the concrete pots of plants and plots of land inhabited only by copses of trees, there is nothing to see other than this. He was struck by its rural heart, at first, but now Wycoller gives the feeling of being left behind. Phil is convinced there isn’t even a village store - until he finds it.

He parks as best as he can by the side of the road, just a way down from the store itself. There aren’t any yellow lines, but the roads are so narrow that he can’t be certain it’s allowed, so he maneuvers corners and doorways as best as he can. Pocketing the keys and pulling his bag over his arm, he approaches it.

Against the countryside stone walls and the specific impression these give, the bright white of the linoleum floor and walls look alien and improper. When he steps in, Phil feels the same, and frets that his unfamiliar face will betray everything he came with: who he is, why he’s here, who he’s looking for, all handed out to any suspicious eyes that land on him.

Hunger drives him forward, though, and he grabs some crisps and a sandwich from the neatly stacked shelves. The cashier smiles at him, not a hint of suspicion in her, so he smiles back. On his way to the tills, he catches sight of the newspapers, and so decides to take a look at the headlines; the infamous killer still rules the space, and Phil notes that the murder of Cadence Collins has finally been brought to life, in the form of _speculate that_ and _possible serial killer?_. He bends down slightly to read the smaller text.

“Experts have placed Toby Stanford’s time of death between 3 and 5am,” one sentence says. “Police urge anyone with information concerning Toby Stanford, Cadence Collins, or Dan Howell to come forward,” another recounts, verbatim of every other newspaper on the shelf. Dan Howell’s taxi receipts still sit in his bag, flaring a painful red: _6:50, 6:59_.

The door of the store swings open. Never one to attract the attention of strangers, Phil keeps his eyes rooted to facts he’s heard before.

Someone taps him on the shoulder.

Perhaps it is the cashier. Perhaps he dropped something.

No. Someone has grabbed his shoulder.

Phil’s stomach drops, the trap doors flinging open, the gallows suspending him in midair.

“ _What the hell are you doing?”_ they hiss.

Pushing himself up, Phil wrenches his neck round to face them, eyes wide and taut with shock.

Standing in front of him, looking furious and pissed off, frankly, but not fatal or murderous, is Dan Howell.

When Phil was still hunting Dan Howell down, the day’s worth of travel time between them might as well have been a year’s, or a century’s. Dan Howell wasn’t _here_ , so it didn’t matter how many hours separated them. But now, finally, their paths converge: Phil’s charging into Dan’s with such force that he is nearly flung backwards.

He looks different. His hair is chopped short, jagged and uneven especially behind his ears; stubble darkens his jaw; Phil thinks he’s wearing contacts between those thick glasses frames. Dan Howell, cold-blooded killer turned wrongly-accused, is stood in front of him, demanding an answer from him. Phil doesn’t know how to gauge him: his question is not _who are you?_ , but _what are you doing?_ , as if he knows Phil, and knows what he _should_ be doing. What does one say to that? Phil doesn’t know what’s expected of him. Perhaps he’s confused Phil for someone else.

He has not asked _do you believe I’m innocent?_

“I’m Phil,” he says, because if this is to work, if they are to get along, they need to have a level playing field, at least.

“I know,” Dan Howell says. “We’re going to your car.”

Phil blinks. “Pardon?”

“Your car. My car, whatever. Let’s go.”

“What do you mean, ‘I know’?” Phil’s fingers tighten and untighten around his packet of crisps. He shrinks within himself.

“Let’s go to your car,” Dan repeats.

Phil furrows his brow, then says, “I, um, need to pay.”

Dan takes a step back. Phil hadn’t realised how close he was until he’s gone. “Okay. Go on, then.”

Phil goes on, then.

The cashier, a middle-aged person called Tony, comments that it’s a shame the weather’s taken a turn for the worst. Phil hums in agreement and drops his money onto the surface instead of into their hand.

Shoving the food in his bag, he hurries back to Dan Howell. Dan Howell’s hands are deep in his pockets; headphones dangle out from his jacket collar. He turns expectantly upon Phil’s arrival, face infuriatingly blank except for the firm, dark draw of his brows.

Phil peers out of the window. The rain has stopped momentarily, but it looks like it should be ten in the evening, instead of early afternoon.

“Just there,” Phil tells him before he can ask again. Dan Howell nods, appraisingly. Phil expects him to speed off out of the store, but he waits for Phil to move. He walks alongside him out through the door. He walks alongside him the whole way to the rental. With his eyes trained to the pavement, averted from any possible passerby, he says to Phil, “I gather you found my things, then?” He smiles, amicably. Phil understands, then: two friends chatting is normal, but two strangers, one guiding the other to his car, would plant firmly in the mind. He feels for the hood of his jacket before remembering he doesn’t have one. The paranoia Dan Howell clearly has is already feasting on his brain.

“What do you mean, ‘I know’?” he tries again, in the same light tone Dan Howell adopted.

Dan Howell just jerks his head away, a infinitesimal shake of the head.

Not once does Dan Howell ask Phil which way to go - he must recognise the car. This is confirmed when he stops and reaches for the door handle.

“Can I drive? Please?” The please is said politely. His voice tells Phil that, really, he can’t take no for an answer.

Phil becomes acutely aware of the speed his heart is beating at. The insides of his hands are uncomfortably sweaty. “Sure,” he utters, and blankly heads for the passenger door.

Dan waits patiently as Phil pushes his bag in before him and clambers into the seat, his fingers tapping the steering wheel. Phil sits down, because there is nothing else he can do. How does one comprehend this moment? It’s the end of the road, but Phil feels like he should still be running.

“What do you mean, ‘I know’?” he tries one final time. “How do you know?”

Dan Howell grins - not cruelly, just the flick of amusement in the corner of his lips. “Same way you know who I am.”

A wicked twist of excitement tingles up Phil’s spine. He wants to press further, but Dan has returned his focus to the road - he doesn’t intend to continue as long as they’re driving.

“Where are you taking me?”

“To my house.”

“Your _house_?”

“That’s what you want, right?” Dan turns to face Phil and his slack mouth. He sighs. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“I -”

“But you are, so I have to go with it.” The lines in his forehead deepen; in his eyes there is anger. And - something else, something Phil knows he relates to but cannot determine.

“What did you mean, I -”

“We’re here.”

The car pulls up into a gravel drive. The house is like the one next to it, and the one next to that, all the way down the street. Flowers droop in a window pot, lace curtains pulled shut over the glass. The door is painted dark blue, and a gnome fishes on the step beside it.

Dan slams his car door, an echoing noise shooting out after it and making Phil wince.

“I fail to see how this is your house,” Phil says, hand on the car roof to haul himself and his bag out. His eyes land on the gnome. “I didn’t think this was really your style.”

Dan shoots him a meaningful look. “Please, stop the sass.” Fishing a set of keys out of his back pocket, he continues, “Until we get inside, at least, for fuck’s sake.”

“Sorry.” Phil tugs the zip of his jacket up higher, until its plastic fangs are biting into his neck.

Dan makes his way up the paved path to the door in easy, long strides; Phil follows, maintaining a respectful distance the whole time. Metal on wood, the keys clash on the door as Dan shoves them into the lock, twists, and pushes the door open.

“In, quickly,” he tells Phil, and disappears into the gloom.

Ducking past a swinging basket of flowers and weeds, Phil steps over the threshold, the wind and mist murmuring behind his back. He expects it to be cold, empty, uninhabited, but the building must have central heating, for a welcome heat runs down his sides. In the dark, he can make out only a staircase, closed doors, and a stone floor. The first door is the exception: ajar, with light blazing out the edges, so Phil nudges it open and walks in.

“Oh,” he says.

The room is fully furnished. Phil was expecting it to be long abandoned, but armchairs emblazoned with woven flowers lounge around a fireplace, heavy curtains are pulled back by tasselled ties, and a clock ticks the time away from the mantelpiece. A laptop whirs away on the seat of one of the chairs. Dan Howell stands in the middle of it all, moisture wiped from his glasses. Phil can see how his disguise works, how he could be mistaken for a nobody to somebody who only knows his face from the news. Is Phil only a somebody in relation to Dan Howell? There is surely no way to tell.

“I have no fucking clue how I’m going to do this,” Dan Howell admits. “I’m just improvising.”

“So am I,” Phil says. He smiles - he doesn’t know why he’s being so _friendly_ to a stranger, but there doesn’t feel like there is any other way. “You could start with explaining the house.”

“Right.” Dan Howell folds his arms. “This house belongs to a family friend. She normally rents it out around this time of year, but she’s in hospital at the moment and can’t do that. I took the liberty of occupying it for her. This place gets just enough tourists that a new face won’t be suspicious.”

“So she doesn’t know you’re here?”

“Are you really asking me that?”

“That’s a no, then.”

“If you say so, Sherlock. How come you didn’t find me sooner?”

Phil smiles again, a little easier this time. Dan Howell looks like he’s considering it. “Why didn’t you come straight here?” Phil counters, the snide remark reviving a thought.

“I did.” Dan shrugs. “I just came the long way round - as did you.”

“I know this is a stupid question -” Phil begins.

“Good, that saves me a job.”

“- but why? Why come the long way round?”

“Have you seen the news?”

“Don’t be a dick. I _mean_ , why not show the police what you’ve shown me? Why take so long to come here? Surely, the quicker you get the hell away, the better?”

“Is now a good time to tell you that someone wants me dead?”

Phil blanches. His suspicions had been strong, but the confirmation of them does nothing to improve his anxiety; when he locks eyes with Dan, pity surges in him like a high tide. “It depends,” he replies, gently, “is your kettle working?”

Dan rolls his eyes. “Yeah, let’s be typically rural and drink tea in my country house kitchen.”

“I was hoping for coffee.”

“So was I, when I got here. But I had to go and get some myself.” Dan pulls open the living room door, reaches round into the corridor, and flicks on a light. The wall opposite is bare, painted cream white, with a watercolour painting hanging in a wooden frame.

“The horrors you’ve been through,” Phil jokes, following him through. The rooms are warm, but the cold of the stone floor seeps up through the soles of his shoes.

“Everything’s ten times harder when you’re undercover.”

Phil finds the kitchen - and Dan - through the farthest door, Dan leaning against a thick, wooden table. Two timber beams arch up into the plaster. The kettle is already boiling. “I can see that.”

“Yeah.” Staring downwards, Dan wrings his hands together. “So, these people who want me dead -”

Phil raises a hand to stop him. “Let’s wait until we’ve got some caffeine. Where are the mugs?”

“This isn’t a fucking mother’s meeting.”

“Where are the mugs? Over here?” Phil points up to a cupboard above the cooker.

Dan smiles, harshly, like the shape doesn’t belong on his face. “Not even close.”

Phil finds the mugs, and then the coffee; he makes them both a cup of instant while Dan tugs at his hair and watches in silence. He leads them back to the first room and stands with most of his weight on one leg - Dan looks too restless for sitting.

“They got Toby, and Cadence, and they’re after me. They’ve always been after me,” Dan explains, the words hot lava pouring from his cracked lips, before Phil even has the chance to prompt him. “I can’t just _go_ places. They’ve got eyes everywhere.”

“How do you know?”

So cool and measured he was before, but now Dan is an open book where the pages keep flicking and the emotions keep kicking. “You don’t understand. What it’s been like...it’s like everything I touch dies.”

“And,” Phil says, “that’s why I shouldn’t be here. I’m in danger too, is that it?”

“Partly.”

“Partly?”

“It’s harder to find one needle in a haystack than two needles,” Dan states.

Phil lowers his chin, once, in a slow nod. “So I’m a liability?”

“I don’t know,” Dan replies honestly. “I don’t know what they can do.”

Dan still won’t say who _they_ are, or why they’re after him, but Phil’s sure the information is in there, about to float up to the surface. Phil just has to coax it out of him.

Phil feels oddly patient about this. This is the truth he’s sought after, after all. He’s happy to watch it unroll in front of him, finally, no matter how long it takes. As long as it happens. And Dan Howell is stood in front of him, so he knows it will.

“But you’re safe here?” Phil asks, looking around at the dusty corners and the blackened wood in the fireplace. It’s certainly comfortable, but that won’t save his life.

“I haven’t spoken with her in ages, and as far as I know there’s no record of us knowing each other, so hopefully they won’t find me here.” Dan treats the words carefully, because the guarantee is flimsy, and concern worries at the corners of his eyes.

“But?”

“ _But_ , then you came over here and _showed your face in the local corner shop_.”

Phil winces. “I can now see how that’s not ideal.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not the first time, either. Do you know how many times you’ve almost fucked me over?”

“I - no.”

“More than zero. Too many. Ideally, I would have stayed in each place a little longer, but I couldn’t. It’s hard to stay anonymous as it is, without some amateur photographer on my damn tail.”

“Sorry. I didn’t know it’d be like this.”

Dan dismisses his apology with a swipe of his hand, _doesn’t matter_. “I didn’t know either, but hey, here I am. You’ll learn.”

“Sorry,” Phil says again.

“Did you kill Toby Stanford?”

“Uh, no?”

“Then stop apologising.”

Phil switches from foot to foot. “Do _you_ know who did?”

Dan’s face falls. Phil regrets asking.

“Something you need to know,” Dan says, “is that I know very little about any of this. I know two of my friends are dead. I know I am being framed for their deaths. I know someone wants me silent. I know you are probably in danger, now, too. I know that only one of the hobs in the kitchen works.”

“Not the best news, then.”

“Not exactly,” Dan replies, dryly. He takes a long sip of his coffee, and Phil studies him, letting the new information sink in.

“What’s happening?” Phil asks, when Dan shows no signs of continuing.

Dan stays silent. Rain knocks at the window, over and over and over. Wind gushes down the chimney.

“What’s happening to you? Why’s it happening?”

“That,” Dan says, “is a complicated story, and not one I _really_ want to tell.”

“I think you’re going to have to tell me.”

“I know. I never said I wouldn’t.”

“Okay. S- okay.”

Dan sighs - a long, tremulous sound that can’t support itself. “You got any more questions, or can I tell the whole story and then see if you’ve any left?”

“You sound like a teacher.” Phil clenches his fingers to stop them trembling. The street is empty. At any minute, death could round the corner and send two bullets through the window. Knowing any minute could be his last is walking along a cliff in the dark. There is only the subtle changes in the waves to mark his path.

Rubbing his temple, Dan says, “God, I know.”

Phil holds his mug in two hands in front of him. “From the beginning?”

Dan closes his eyes. Opens them. “From the beginning.

“If you’ve seen the news, you’ll know I was a credit card thief. I’d hide a copying machine on cash registers and come back the next day with a whole fuckton of numbers for me to sell.”

“I suppose these are in layman’s terms?” Phil cuts in.

“It’s for your benefit, Phil. Anyway. My job didn’t pay well, I needed the money, and I knew how to hack. I’m not exactly proud of it.” His eyes pass over Phil’s. “One day, about three, four months ago, I stumbled across something. A very big something. I couldn’t tell what it was, at first, and I’m still not one hundred percent sure.”

“What was it?”

“I’m coming to that,” Dan snaps. “Sorry. Just. Let me get used to this.” He pulls his shoulders up tight, tugs again at a strand of hair. “You know about Germany after the World War. Wheelbarrows of notes, all that shit. Hyperinflation is the bane of our economy. Governments are always trying to find new ways to generate money without collapsing the financial world.” He looks to Phil, who nods in understanding. “What I found was a bank account with a very large sum of money in it. Like, in the seven or eight digits big. And every few seconds, the amount would increase. Just like that. There were no transactions, no nothing. Just money.”

“A fuckton of it.”

“Exactly. I tried to work out where it was coming from, but the source was hidden by a proxy. It was incredibly well-protected, in fact. This bank account hadn’t yet made contact with the outside world.”

Dan goes silent. After a moment of vacillation, Phil approaches the danger and asks, “What do you suppose it is?”

Dan shakes his head. “I can’t know for certain. My theory is that someone has found some way - a something - that generates money eternally.”

A memory locks into place. “An AI,” Phil mutters.

Dan shoots him a meaningful look. “Probably. I don’t think they know how to stop it.”

Nodding as he takes this in, Phil leaves an easy pause between them. It feels like it belongs there. Life has been so rushed, they both need time to catch their breath, to be able to lean in the empty gaps without constantly looking over their shoulders. Outside of this conversation, that can no longer exist. After this conversation, plans and hazards and consequences will rush up to meet them and crunch under their feet. After this conversation, nothing will be the same - so calm, so measured, so controlled - again.

“And you think this is what’s putting you in danger?”

Dan turns around, walks over to a chair, and balances his empty mug on the left arm. “I left it be. Deleted everything, all the data I got on it, and tried to forget about it,” he talks as if he didn’t hear Phil’s question, addressing the room in general instead of Phil. Phil hovers as Dan wanders around the chairs. Then, Dan snaps his head back to Phil, and looks unwaveringly at him. “You get that sense, sometimes. That things are bigger than you. Do you get what I mean?”

Phil nods, because he does. In his head, the northern hills spin out from all sides.

“But things started going wrong. Not large things. Small things. My employers told me they’d received complaints about my work. False complaints, might I add. I apologised, said it wouldn’t happen again, but the complaints kept coming. I argued my innocence, but they said they couldn’t risk the company’s reputation.”

“They fired you.” Phil recalls a Facebook post from a few months back.

Dan nods. “I don’t know why, but I decided to pursue the bank account again. I worked for hours on the firewalls and everything else, with no luck. So I turned to the Internet.

“But then the eviction notice came through. I wasn’t behind on rent, but rates were going to rise. I couldn’t afford them. My landlord knew that, and told me there was nothing she could do. If someone else could afford to pay what I couldn’t, then I’d have to go. She didn’t have a date, but she said it would inevitably happen. There was nothing I could do. I kept digging. Weird men started appearing on my street. My broadband kept breaking, but my provider couldn’t explain why. They were all such small things…

“I started to realise that someone knew I’d discovered it. I should’ve been put off, but I wasn’t. I kept going. This AI could result in a global economy crisis, after all. And I was bored, and reckless. I had nothing left to lose.”

“You managed to find stuff out?” Phil asks, wide-eyed.

“You wouldn’t think it, but everything leaves a trace somewhere. Most of it was just the ramblings of nutters, but some of it fitted. I didn’t find out much more than what I’ve said, just shit about government conspiracies and artificial intelligence, but I think it was the proof I had that scared them. I didn’t need to understand _what_ , or _why_. One word from me, and the whole world would know what was going on.

“I don’t know what I was supposed to do. I could hardly forget what I saw. But, I think, if I’d just left it, if I had disposed of my evidence and walked away, then…” Dan squeezes his eyes shut. Held out in front of him, his hands curl into weak fists.

“Toby,” Phil supplies. Quietly, remorsefully. Guilt wracks his ribcage.

“He wasn’t meant to die,” Dan says, eyes still shut. Phil thinks perhaps he should look away, too. Dan isn’t explaining things anymore: he’s remembering, reliving. And now, there is only this: wishing. “This group doesn’t work through dominance or fear. They work in subtleties. Their power is in control - they have enough people in the right places that events can be steered and their endings decided before the people they concern even know there was a different outcome.

“I’m sure they only went after Toby to get to me. By scaring Toby, they were establishing their control over me. Murder has repercussions and investigations and attention. I don’t think they ever wanted it to go that far, but I didn’t stop -”

“It’s not your fault.”

“I didn’t stop looking. I was so fucking _stupid_ , I had no idea how much they could do.

“They didn’t just kill Toby. They caught me in the perfect trap. Somehow,” here, Dan’s face crumples into utter, hopeless confusion, “it had all been planned from the start, every possibility and event twisted to their favour. They don’t need to find me anymore, because the police will. The only evidence that I’m innocent is in your bag.” Dan’s gaze travels to the rucksack at Phil’s feet. “They’ll do anything they can to take it from you.”

“I won’t let them.”

“That’s not good enough.” In the face of Dan’s truth - his face the description of a wasteland, an ending come and gone - Phil’s resolve crumbles. “I thought I had nothing they could use against me. And then Toby died. Suddenly, I truly had nothing to lose, but I had everything to gain by unearthing what was going on and avenging Toby’s death.

“I told myself they wouldn’t break me. I told myself I could work out what was happening and prove my innocence, all before they leaked my name to the police.”

“So you went to Cadence.”

“For help,” Dan confirms.

“Because she worked in a bank.”

“She didn’t just work in a bank. Pardon the expression, but she _was_ the bank. She was responsible for making sure everything functioned. If anyone knew what I had found, it was her. I was so panicked and overwhelmed by everything that I never thought about the dangers of bringing the evidence to her. His death had left me emotionally exhausted. I didn’t have time to consider how far their control stretched. All I thought was that if I didn’t make his death worth something, I’d have nothing left of me.

“So I went to Reading. I’d made the journey so many times before, it almost felt like nothing was different. She welcomed me in, offered me a drink like usual. We sat down in her lounge, and I explained everything to her. Gave her the credit card details and a list of everything I’d found out. She knew it was risky, of course. She was too smart not to. But she agreed to look into it, and said she should have something more by the morning.

“I was over the moon. It had only been a few days since Toby had died - my emotions were all over the place, polarized feelings only. Cadence had offered me a lifeline. I checked into my hotel, then went to research more. I wanted to check if any new information had come up, anything that could help her. Predictably, I found fuck all, so I left it and went to bed.

“I woke up early. Too excited to sleep, I guess. I texted Cadence, asking if I could head over. There was no reply. I called, and no one picked up.”

“They killed her,” Phil breaths - the information known to him, but the burden heavier, padded with the tale and the poignancy and the loneliness. It took Dan Howell a path of death and destruction for him to end up here, standing in front of Phil.

Dan sniffs, wipes his wrist over his nose. “In her sleep. She didn’t even have a chance to fight back, the bastards. I’ll never know if she woke up or not. Perhaps her last thought was that I was responsible.”

“But you weren’t,” Phil points out, soft, two fingers rubbing over his bottom lip.

“I shouldn’t have taken those fucking things to her. I should have _known_ that they’d see what I did. Hadn’t I seen enough of my friends dead?”

Phil says nothing.

Dan continues, because he didn’t expect Phil to have anything to say, “When I went there, I sealed both of our fates. Her cleaner knew I visited. The hotel staff would be able to identify my face. I turned myself into their serial killer. Who knows, maybe I am one,” he spits.

“You’re not.” The downcast glare of Dan’s eyes tells him not to bother.

“I shouldn’t have told her what I knew. That information killed her.”

“But you told me.”

“I have no other choice!” Dan exclaims, throwing his hands up in the air. “Look where we are, Phil! You’re here, I’m here. We’re here together. If they find you, they find me. We’re in the middle of fucking _nowhere_ , and it isn’t like you’d agree to trot off home without knowing why.”

Phil bows his head. “You’re right.”

Dan looks at him, his folded brow and open mouth depicting him in the imploring, helpless light that means he wishes he wasn’t right about any of this. “The phone call.”

“What?”

“You’re wondering where you come into this, how I know about you. It was the phone call, that second day. Only three people ever called me: my mum, Toby, and Cadence. Your number was none of those. You could’ve been a cold caller, of course, but I looked up the number and nothing came up. I couldn’t shake the feeling that someone knew who they were trying to call; I write my number down on a piece of paper because I’ve never managed to remember it, so if someone had my number, it meant they had been in my apartment.”

“You were right,” Phil confirms. There’s no room for embarrassment.

“Paranoia makes every possibility come to mind. It was hardly intelligence,” Dan says. “Anyway. I was still in the B&B at the time, and I planned to stay there for at least another day. But I couldn’t stay if someone was onto me, so I texted Cadence and planned to leave. I found out your name and -”

“What?” Phil cuts in. “How in hell?”

Dan gives a wickedly sad smile. “I’m a hacker.”

“Right. Of course.”

“From there, it was quite easy to figure out exactly who was following me: a journalist and a photographer, who couldn’t quite shake his two thousand’s scene phase, judging from his Facebook picture.”

“Hey!” Phil objects. “This isn’t a complaints session.”

“It’s not a counselling session, either,” Dan retorts. “I guessed you wanted to get your hands on a big story, but fuck me if I knew how you found me.” Here, he pauses and looks to Phil.

“Oh. Um, I was taking pictures that morning, on the street near Tob- the murder scene. You were getting into a taxi. I recognised your face from the description on the news. It was absurdly lucky.”

“Quite.”

“I would show you a physical copy,” Phil tells him, picking up his bag and rifling inside for his camera. He pulls it out, and fiddles with the buttons on screen as he continues, “but they went missing.”

Dan receives the camera Phil thrusts into his hands. “I’m not surprised. You weren’t subtle with your searching. The train station was a dumb move.”

“How did you…” Phil begins, but stops when Dan raises an eyebrow at him. “You’re a hacker,” he finishes. “What was I meant to do instead, then?”

“What you should have done was leave me alone. It was too late by then, though, if your photos’d gone missing.”

“Wait. You mean, you think _they_ took…” Phil trails off. His skin crawls and bubbles from an underlying fear; his head spins.

“Don’t worry,” Dan says, in a tone that definitely does not convey comfort, “it seems you managed to lose them.” He throws out his arm, the camera dangling from his wrist.

Taking it, Phil holds his camera close to his chest. Something is dawning on him. Though, it is the opposite of dawn: a frightening black is descending, clogging his lungs, a dreadful realisation skittering across his skull in the darkness. “These people, they can be anyone?”

“Yes.”

The truth, bare and cruel, is the jagged lump that sits in his throat. “There were people...In the Internet Cafe with me. Behind me in the ticket queue…”

“It’s highly likely they were watching you,” Dan confirms. His unsurprised tone is not the coolant Phil needs for the burn coursing through him; its even surface only serves to highlight how heightened his shock is. “They needed to monitor you, to see what you knew.”

“When I asked my boss for permission to work on your case,” Phil asks, “was that them? Making her say no?”

“We’ll never know if it was really her decision.”

“And the anonymous tip to the police?”

“Almost certainly them. Their fight is the public’s fight, now.”

“Oh, fuck. Oh, _fuck_.”

“Phil, it’s fine. They’re not here.”

“We don’t _know_ that,” he stresses.

“They would have killed us by now,” Dan says, lip curling.

“Is that what they’ll do? Kill me?” All the blood falls from his body. He knows only fear. The feeling that a bus is thundering towards him and he doesn’t have time to jump out of the way.

“Look on the bright side, they might make you my accomplice instead,” Dan sneers. “I told you: they’re probably letting the police do the dirty work. Their trap has worked.”

“That doesn’t make sense. What if I exposed them? What if I proved you were innocent? They have no way of ensuring we won’t ruin them.”

Dan shakes his head. “Their web is too expansive. They know that we know if we make any kind of ambitious move, they’ll finish us.”

Phil fights to keep his number of breaths down to a minimum. “And if the police don’t find you? Us?”

“Then they’ll have to come and get us themselves.”

Phil’s head hurts.

His head hurts, and his fingers won’t stay still, and his heart is beating out of his chest. Any thump could be its last.

“Who are they?” he asks. No - demands. No - begs. “Are they the government?”

“I don’t know.”

The truth, bare and cruel, is the complete, deathly silence Phil is stunned into hearing. He doesn’t just hear it, but feels it - a lack, an emptiness, an ultimatum.

“You...don’t know?”

_How does he not know?_

“All I know is this: they want me silent. They’ve been working hard to cut me off. Or, I suppose, to make me into the perfect criminal. Maybe both. Probably both,” he decides. “Whatever. What they want is for me to be buried, and my knowledge to go with me.”

Dan Howell is afraid.

Phil doesn’t know how he didn’t realise before. There were signs. But more powerful than those, was the image Phil had constructed in his mind with Dan’s established innocence. He wasn’t an expert killer anymore, but he was still an expert. Phil viewed Dan as a guide: smart, brave, acquainted with the underworld. But there are the facts: Dan Howell is afraid. The mistakes were not signs of hurriedness. They were signs of an amateur. A guesser. Dan Howell was forced to run, but he also wasn’t _made_ to run away. He’s as unsure as Phil is. He’s doing the best he can, but while his path may be unknowable to someone intercepting from the middle or the end, to someone who follows it from the beginning - as Phil did - it’s there, hidden under the guises and twists and diversions.

At first, there was Howell: cold-blooded killer, fugitive, Phil’s big news. Next, Dan Howell: guilt and innocence up in the air, an untouchable runaway who knew how to navigate his place in the seeing world. And now there is only Dan: lost, and trying, and sorrowful sorrowful sorrowful.

They are not invisible or invincible. It is only a matter of time.

Now, they are only as safe as these four walls make them, only as unknown as Wycoller is.

The situation presses down on him, All miles around are unknown, possibly crawling with people who want them dead. Stranded in a remote village in the north of the country, it’s only the two of them. The awareness makes Phil dizzy. He sits down. Lowers himself into the seat, then lowers his head into his hands.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, fine. Fine.”

“I know this isn’t what you expected to find.”

Phil wishes Dan would stop talking like he knows everything. Like he has this under control. He doesn’t. Phil knows this, Dan knows this. But this must be how he talks, or how he copes, or both, and he can do little about that.

“Why do you trust me?” Phil blurts out.

Dan looks at him sharply. “How do you know I do?”

“The note in the car...You wouldn’t have left those there if you thought it was pointless.”

“You don’t know how desperate I am.”

“The shop, then. The fact you’re telling me any of this at all. Not once have you asked me if I think you’re innocent or guilty. You’re paranoid, but you never seemed the slightest bit worried that I could tell the police where you are.”

“Are you going to?”

“No -”

“There you go, then.”

“But that doesn’t explain how you knew. I came here to find you, but you found me instead.”

With a gentle exhale, Dan moves his laptop aside and takes a seat on the chair opposite Phil’s. “I read your work online.”

“Did I write a column on befriending Britain’s most wanted that I forgot about?”

“It was only small stories,” Dan soldiers on, “but those, combined with your social media, let me figure what kind of person you are. You weren’t following me for fame or a hunger for blood. You wanted the truth.”

“What, you risked compromising your position for a _hunch_?” Phil looks up from his hands, aghast.

“And evidence.” Dan points, once more, at Phil’s bag. “You’re the only person I’ve shown that stuff to. I couldn’t risk them finding out about it and destroying it. It’s not fault proof, but it’s all I’ve got. I knew that, in finding me, you’d find it.”

“You couldn’t have known I’d believe it.”

“Like I said, I was very desperate. Also, I was right.”

“You didn’t know that at the time. It doesn’t mean anything whether you’re right or not.”

“Yes, it does.”

“No, it _doesn’t_ ,” Phil insists. He should be flattered that Dan trusted him so easily - it’s what he needs - but the thought of relying on a hunch alone petrifies him.

“Yes, it _does_.” Dan’s voice isn’t louder, but the vehemence he supplies it with makes it explode in Phil’s face, forcing him to give in. “Other consequences are irrelevant. All that matters is the present, and in it, you believe me. You are the _only_ person alive who believes me. That’s all I needed. That’s all I need. I need someone who believes me. Please.” _Believe me, please trust me_ , he doesn’t say.

The truth, bare and cruel, is the quiet, shuddering way Phil has to accept his new place in his world - beside Dan, and no one else.

“How am I doing this?” he whispers, gesturing between them, the distance shortened by Dan leaning forward to comfort him. “Normally I hate talking to new people…”

“But here we are, swapping secrets like we’re the best of friends,” Dan finishes, grim.

“Exactly.”

“It’s the fear,” Dan says. He stares out of the window behind Phil. “It does crazy things to you.”

Phil nods. “I’m certainly afraid.”

“Really? I’m fucking terrified.”

Phil hums, solemn. “I do believe you,” he says.

“And I trust you.”

“But you don’t know me.”

“And you don’t know me. But this is a need-to-know situation, so that’s okay.”

Phil frowns. “What do you mean?”

“I can’t know anything important about you: where you live, your family’s names, none of it.”

“You didn’t find that out when you looked me up?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

Dan tangles his fingers together, then braces them, pulling them taut and tight. “It feels safer that way,” he admits. “If they find me, I don’t want to give you away.”

“They probably already know all of it.”

“I know.”

“So what’s the real reason?” Phil presses, even though he feels he’d rather not know.

Dan swallows. “Maybe, the less I know about where you fit in with life, the easier it’ll be to lose you. If that ever has to happen.

“When,” Phil corrects, speaking his mind before he can bite the thought into a million pieces.

“Maybe,” Dan agrees.

“Ah.”

“Exactly.”

“Well.” Phil sits up, pushes his hands down his lap. “It’s only me and you, now, for the foreseeable future. It’s not like any of it’s relevant, right?”

“Right.” Dan’s face gives way to a thankful smile. He doesn’t apologise for Phil’s previous life being a lost cause, but Phil knows he wants to. “I can’t deal with campfire shit. I don’t want you to introduce yourself.”

“I don’t need to: you  _stalked_ me.”

Dan flips him off. “Give me something totally irrelevant. But good. One fun fact about you. Go.”

“Um.”

“I like your shirt.” With the warmth of the central heating, Phil found it necessary to take off his jacket; the shirt Dan speaks of is covered in block-white stars. “There’s mine. Go.”

“I kill house plants,” Phil finally decides on saying. “I don’t mean to. I’m just not a very organised, responsible person.”

Dan regards him. Then, he grins. “Problematic,” he says, “but I’ll work with it.”

-

A house tour is obligatory, Dan decides, as Phil will undoubtedly be living there for a while. Phil accepts the offer, because it isn’t really an offer - most things aren’t, with Dan - and he doesn’t have anything else to do. Although Dan is certain it’s needed, there aren’t many new things to see on the first floor. Other than the kitchen and living room, there is only a toilet, larder, and TV room left; the rooms all carry the same demeanor - rustic without meaning to be, wooden surfaces and glass cabinets and arching fireplaces plastered up. The toilet is a miniscule space between four walls - “there’s a bath upstairs, I promise,” Dan assures him; the larder is stashed with an impressive amount of food, settling Phil’s nerves a little; the TV room is the most modern, brightly lit from expansive windows, ribbed with timber beams from above. China and porcelain glints from cabinets; two sofas, beige and awfully plain compared to the thick floral weave of the ones in the living room, fill the space beneath the TV. Outside, the world is stained grey, with rain streaking down the window panes.

“This house has five sofas,” Dan remarks, dodging one to cross the room and pull the curtains across the windows. “I’m not even exaggerating.”

Phil counts them up in his head. “Where’s the fifth?”

“There’s an attic,” Dan replies, curling his lip.

“I dread to think how many bugs we’re sharing this place with.”

“No bats or rats, though,” Dan says, flicking off the lights - the light fixtures on the wall fade from amber to nothing - and shutting the door. “I checked.”

“Thank God for small mercies,” Phil agrees. A snap of thunder shakes the sky; Dan winces, but he doesn’t look particularly scared.

“I’ll take you to your room now.”

“Do I get room service with that?”

“Only if you don’t leave crumbs in the bed,” Dan says, twisting to tell him so - the shadows of the corridor cast daggers on his face, dichotomy with his paling skin; dragging two fingers along the wooden staircase, he leads them back to the first room.

Phil watches him pick up a stray piece of wood and chuck it back into the fireplace, _thunk_ , and asks, “Does that thing light?”

“No, the ash is for special effect,” Dan says - derisive, but lax.

Phil nods. “You have to question the integrity of everything these days.”

“We can try later, if you want.”

“It’s summer.”

“Also, raining.” Dan points a finger out the window.

“Death by anonymous secret assassin gang, or death by fire,” Phil dramatically ponders. “I know which I’d rather.”

“Neither, I hope,” Dan says. “Or both.”

“No one likes a smartarse.”

“That would explain it.”

Their situation comes back to him. “Sorry,” Phil says, biting his lip, gauging Dan’s reaction.

Dan waves his apologies away. “Do you have any more bags?”

“No,” Phil replies, kicking his rucksack with his toe; it sways, but doesn’t fall over, the weight keeping it anchored.

“Did you _know_ you were gonna be away?” Dan questions, skeptical and incredulous. “Did you think this was gonna be a weekend trip?”

“It’s already Sunday,” Phil points out.

“No one likes a smartarse.”

“Shit, how has it only been four days?” Phil realises, shaken; he takes a step forward and braces his weight on one of the arm chairs, a hand to his forehead. “That’s such a short number of days. It feels like it should’ve been longer - these things always take a long time.”

“These things?” Dan repeats, raising his eyebrows.

“Things! These things! Mysteries and murder investigations!”

“This isn’t a novel, Phil,” Dan tells him - not mad, or chastising, but careful and weighty, as if studying him.

“I know, I know.” He rubs his eyes. “But _four days_.”

“Well, if you’d waited a day or two before fucking _following_ me, it would be longer.”

“I didn’t think you would be so easy to find,” Phil says, then wishes he hadn’t.

“Luck,” Dan explains it away, “aided by your desperate need for a story. They’re not going to find us.”

“How can you be so sure?” The world has started spinning again - except, instead of feeling enormous and unknowable, it becomes smaller and smaller and smaller; what if they were not needles within a haystack, but foxes in an empty forest?

“I paid for everything in cash, I changed my face, I went rural to avoid technology” Dan lists. “I did everything I could to stay out of main channels. There’s nothing else we can do. Stay away from windows, if it makes you feel better.”

“I can’t tell if you’re being serious or not…” Frowning, Phil glances between the shadowed window and the shadowed silhouette of Dan.

“People have seen me around, getting food and shit,” Dan says. “And a couple have probably seen me come in here. But the less they know about who’s who and who’s where, the better, really.”

“Half serious, then,” Phil concludes. He looks back down at his bag. “I did know I’d be away a while.”

“And everything you needed fit in that one bag?”

“It’s a big bag,” Phil shrugs, releasing a short laugh. “My back fucking hurts, if that helps you.”

“Right.”

“What?”

“I can’t tell if it’s commendable,” Dan starts, squinting.

“Or?”

“If you’re a massive idiot.”

“Both,” Phil decides. “Also, where are your manners? We’re practically strangers.”

Dan snorts. “Oh, I’m sorry, _sir_ ,” he says pointedly. “Can I take your bag?” is asked through gritted teeth.

“Oh, thank you!”

“It’s no problem, sir.” Dan proceeds to pick it up - his arm goes tight with the sudden weight, and he remains bent double. “I’ve got it,” he insists, and strains with the effort of lifting it.

“Now you’re being dramatic,” Phil notes.

“It’s better than talking to myself,” Dan retorts, heading for the door. “Trust me.”

Dan’s talk is so easy and free, as if conjured by a carefree mind, but as Phil watches him leave, he wonders how much of the real Dan Howell is left. He must have been different. Before. Beneath the surface, he must slowly be losing himself - slices of him coming away with every singed recollection, every whimsy turned sour. It’s not like he’s denying it, either, or ignoring it, but whether it’s a cry for help or a lack of shame is something yet to be determined.

Quickly, Phil is left alone in the living room. The laptop continues whirring. Phil hurries out after Dan. The door slams behind him.

“Y’know, this started as a joke.” Dan lugs the bag up the stairs step by step - definitely being dramatic; the light from the hallway doesn’t reach the top of the case, going astray at his heels. “But I’m actually doing this, and I’m gonna persevere because that’s who I am, but you could at least be here to see it.”

“Sorry.” Phil jogs up the stairs after him. “Does this place have wifi?”

Dan turns on him. “You think I’d be here if it didn’t?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

Dan inclines his head, as if to say _touche_ , then resumes his ascent. “Well, it does. It’s kinda shit, but what’d you expect?” He comes to a stop outside the first door they come to, standing in the entrance and swinging the door open. “Also books. Lots of books.”

Phil squeezes between Dan and the banister. He has to stand on tiptoes to see over Dan’s shoulder into the room, but as soon as he does so, Dan steps out of his way.

The size is modest, but not to a restrictive amount; the double bed easily fills most of the space, but there is room enough to walk around. A wardrobe sits in the space between the bed and the closest wall, and a series of wooden slabs, perpendicular to the wall, snake up over the head of the bed: storage is not an issue, either. The wall slopes down, each gradient marked with the same wooden beams, and the window sits almost at floor level; a desk leans beside it. And, finally, a wall is filled completely with books. Ceiling to carpeted floor, wall to wall, titles slump against each other, cramped but not to the point of destruction. Where the dusky lilac of the paint creates the illusion of a larger room, the shelves certainly do the opposite, but the image is so charming and warm that he can’t hate it. Above the bed is the light, the lamp shade shrouded with a lace cover.

Phil nods appreciatively. “This is mine?” he checks with Dan, who leans against the door frame.

“This is yours.” He offers Phil’s bag to him, and he takes it.

Deferential and thoughtful, Phil cranes his neck to eye the highest books - classic literature, mainly, with a few books on modern physics - and says, “You said she was a family friend.” He doesn’t know how to finish, decides he never did, so doesn’t.

“We came to stay here once, over ten years ago,” Dan says. He steps into the room, and Phil ducks out of his way, thankful to him for finishing for him. “This was my room. I had Christmas candy, and I hid it all here.” With two fingers, he tilts two books and slides them out.

“Why?”

“Because it was cooler that way! And my brother was a sneak.”

“No loose floorboards, then.”

“None I could ever find.” Dan takes a step back. “Are you hungry?”

“Yes,” Phil realises. “What’s the time?”

“Seven, I think.”

“Then I am definitely hungry.”

“Good. I have ready meals, or we can make ‘proper’ food.” Dan’s scrunched up nose is only one thing that tells his view on that option.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

“My thoughts,” Dan says. “My thoughts _exactly_ , Phil. I’ll go get it in the microwave, you can stay up here and unpack.” He stares meaningfully at Phil’s rucksack. “If you actually have anything to unpack.”

“I do,” he insists.

“Okay, then.” Back turned, Dan places a hand on each banister, plodding down the stairs. “See you in one minute.”

“Funny.”

“I try.”

Leaning forward and placing his knees on the mattress, Phil spills the contents of his bag onto the bed. He definitely could have packed more: the most substantial things are his camera and the plastic wallet of evidence - evidence that could mean nothing, or could mean a lot, he muses. He tips it all into his hand, the weight of the phone leaving residual ache on impact. After a moment, he stands up, walks over to the bookcase, slides out a few random books, and stuffs the evidence behind them. When he slots them back into place, there is no way to tell anything is hidden behind - the array is so jumbled as it is. Phil adds the authors to memory: _Shelley, Turner, Sage_.

Little thought goes into the rest of the unpacking; the clothes - a few jeans, a few shirts, a handful of socks and underwear - go in a pile in the bottom of the wardrobe; the camera and laptop reside on the desk. Phil feels uneasy when he is alone, knowing anything could happen to him, but to a certain extent, he feels on edge with Dan, too. Almost like having a bomb in the room with you, even if you are mostly sure it is defused. In some ways, Dan’s loss and emptiness and risk sucks all energy out of the room, the knowledge of him weighing constantly on Phil’s mind.

It isn’t that he dislikes Dan. From first impressions, he does like him (it certainly could have been worse, in that respect). But that only adds to the problem. It’s just that Phil can never rest, now - he will never be at ease. Dan is a corporeal reminder of his new circumstance, a pin sticking him to the map. After discovering a ghost, who decides to keep living with them?

Phil adds four minutes to Dan’s prediction of _one_ and heads downstairs. He ekes out the transition period between being alone and being with Dan, switching off each light as he goes and sliding his feet on the stone floor. The rich, salty aroma of the food is already billowing out like smoke.

“Is lasagna okay?” Dan asks, studying a cardboard packet.

“Sure,” Phil says, settling into one of the chairs. He hooks his leg around one of the chair legs.

“Good.”

“Where’d you get all the food from?” Phil inquires, listening to the insistent hum of the microwave.

“The store. I stocked up.”

“So no online shopping?”

Dan shakes his head. “Leaves too much of a trace. Now that we’ve got the car, it’ll be easier. Driving to a close city isn’t too bad, anyway, it’s only about half an hour in each direction. If we change which one we go to each time, it should be fine.”

Phil nods. “Okay. So you haven’t actually left the house?”

“Apart from getting you, no,” Dan confirms. He says _getting you_ as if they had a rendezvous.

“Speaking of which, how’d you know to come and get me? Surely there was no way of knowing?” The matter hadn’t occurred to him, but now he ponders on it, he realises how surreal it is that Dan appeared behind him at such a convenient time, as if manifested from the dust on the floor.

“I hacked the tracker in the car so it would redirect all signals to my laptop.”

“Of course you did.” Phil places his hands on the table, one on top of the each other with his elbows out at an extreme angle, and rests his head on top of them. “I thought you’d just destroyed the tracker.”

“I would have,” Dan allows, “But I knew you were coming.”

“And you were right.”

“Of course I was,” Dan jokes, grinning. Phil smiles back, a silent nod to Dan’s attempt of reassurance. The microwave beeps.

Back in the front room, Phil balances his meal on his lap while Dan crouches over the fireplace. Dan’s plate sits, steaming, on the seat of another chair.

“This does work, I know it does,” Dan insists, as match after match fails to light.

Phil swallows his mouthful, then says, “Isn’t there something else to help it?”

“Like?” He strikes another match; the kindling flickers, curls into a wisp of carbon, and extinguishes. Dan drops the match onto the growing pile.

“Firelighter? Petrol? A magic spell?”

“Firelighters would be a good idea, wouldn’t it?” Dan says, turning to him and waving a finger in the air. He laughs, a throwaway sound, at himself.

Phil agrees, “It would.”

“I’ll be right back,” Dan says, pushing himself up, as if Phil could think any differently. He strides out of the room, and soon after the clash of cupboards and drawers locates him in the kitchen. Carefully, Phil lays his plate on the floor, then kneels down beside the fireplace and scoops up the pile Dan left.

“Is there a bin?” he asks when Dan’s shadow falls across him.

“Don’t bother: we’ll burn them.” Dan’s grin licks flames at his lips, and he waves a bag of firelighters in Phil’s face.

Phil blinks. “Do you want a medal?” he asks, sprinkling the matches onto the pile of logs.

“I want a fire.”

“Me too.”

It’s June, but a brisk type of cold waits in the air, so that his skin tingles. Plus, a fire feels fitting, in this house, and in this village.

The flames catch in a split second. Dan lets out a triumphant cry, throwing another bunch of sticks on to feed the insatiable flames. Soon enough, the fire is roaring; colour talks on the walls, yellow and amber bending and arching around each other; sparks fly with every log Dan chucks on. Phil can feel the heat on his face by the time Dan is pleased with its size and moves to sit down.

“You have to talk to me, now,” Dan says, placing a spoonful of food in his mouth. “There’s no TV for an excuse.”

“It’s a shame,” Phil admits.

“A shame?”

“Unluckily for you,” Phil says, “I don’t find you that bad.”

“Despite the conspiracies and murderous organisations?” Dan smiles as he asks it, but there’s a slope to his gaze. Sometimes, Dan just needs Phil to listen. Now, though, he needs something from him.

“In spite of those things.” Phil gives the something to him. It isn’t hard.

It looks like Dan’s gaze expands, the weight removed swiftly and the rest of the world flooding in once more. “How about my ready meal menu?”

Phil rolls his eyes to the top of his head, gesturing outwards with his fork held in his fingers. “Okay, that could be improved.”

“You can’t top eighty percent of your recommended saturated fats, dude.”

“Is it that bad?”

“I have no fucking clue. Probably. I threw the packages away.”

“We’ll make something better tomorrow,” Phil decides, as a consolation.

Dan returns to his food. “Plant massacres aside, you’re not too bad, either.”

“We all have our flaws, Howell,” Phil warns.

His voice dips - not to the point of quiet, but quieter, softer. His thoughts are untethered. “Tell me about it.”

Dan sticks to his word, refusing to talk about his family or his friends. Their lives from before remain shadows they won’t watch, matches they won’t strike. But he does talk about books, films, and music - he talks about them happily, in fact. Between them, the conversation keeps afloat.

The flames crackle and cackle. All light drains away from the windows. Time is an unknown, a block of ice they catch and hold in their palms until it’s melted, and longer than that. They both know they will only let it go once they are ready, although their hands will go cold and time will drip between their fingers. Two empty plates, scraped clean, bask in the glow of the fireplace.

Senseless chatter turns into thoughtful discussion; Dan contributes most of it, but Phil can’t say he dislikes it. He listens to Dan as he cuts his path through to his point, letting him finish every dreg of a topic because he can tell Dan needs that, needs coverage and completeness. Dan asks questions of him, coaxing him slowly into the very fabric of the conversation, and every thought shared is another hook of string, another bridge built. It feels proper, this way: he is not an onlooker, but a component.

When he speaks, Dan wanders from word to word. He speaks at a steady pace, not fast enough that meaning is lost, but it definitely possesses speed and intention. Not like he knows his destination and wants to arrive at it soon, but like he doesn’t know where he’ll end up and he really wants to find out.

“What am I going to do about work?” Phil says, staring into the flames. It’s ten o’clock - Phil checked his phone. The fire is still vigorously alive, gorgeous.

Dan has just come back from making them both cups of tea, and he ensures both mugs are safely on a surface and he is sat down before he thinks about how to answer. “Phil,” he starts, “You know you can’t think about that anymore. It’s gone. We’re gone.” He says _gone_ in an acute fashion, like it’s a stain on his sleeve that he can’t get rid of.

Phil shakes his head. “I’m not missing. I don’t want to disappear like that.”

“Why not? So you don’t have to live with it?” Dan checks. “Or so they don’t have to?”

“Even if we won’t talk about them, we both left people behind,” Phil recalls. “ _I_ _don’t want to disappear._ I’m not gone. I’m coming back.”

“You don’t know when.”

“But I will come back. And when I do, I want a job.”

Dan settles back in his chair, skin glowing on one side, eyes more enriched with the light. He is not a salvation, or a damnation - he is a turning point. “What will you say?”

Phil doesn’t waste words on _I don’t know_. He pinches his chin with his finger and thumb. He thinks it through, pausing to drink a little, and then says, “Family emergency. I can take emergency leave, or whatever. I’m entitled to some. I just need a reason.”

“I understand.”

Reaching into his pocket, Phil asks, “Can I call?”

“Better you don’t. Send an email instead.”

Phil nods, fingers already tapping and sliding on the screen. “I’ll say I don’t know how long I’ll be gone. I’ll say I’m sorry.”

“When are you not sorry?” Dan mutters, netting the words between his fingers.

“When there’s nothing to be sorry about,” he replies, even quieter. He presses send.

“Of course.”

“There’s nothing selfless about it, really,” Phil says - a newly discovered thought, but not a new one. “Remorse is rather useless.”

“Regret just means you should have done something at the time,” Dan muses aloud. “It’s self pity. Selfish.”

“There wasn’t anything you could do to save Toby,” Phil decides, a fact delivered with all the gentleness of salt in a wound. He tries, though. He tries. “Once you get on the radar of someone like that, you can never get away.”

They’re on the radar too, of course, sending up roman candles and catherine wheels instead of the flares and smoke signals of war.

“Then why am I sorry?” he demands. His mind is made up, there is nothing he could have from Phil to undo it, but still he gives.

“You don’t just let go of someone like that,” Phil says sagely. “If you did, then you’d be a bad person. But you’re not a bad person, Dan. You’re not someone who had something they could have done, you’re just someone who thinks you did. A bad thing happened to you, not because of you.”

“Are you a good person for thinking that?”

“I’m just saying things how I see them. Do you hate me for it?”

“No. I just can’t tell what black and white are anymore. I don’t know.”

“Everything’s grey,” Phil muses, and hums. A stutter of breath from Dan sounds almost like a laugh. “We’ll make a pact.”

Dan drags his eyes up to Phil. “What?”

Phil leans forward in earnest. “No more regret. We get everything done perfectly first time.”

Dan laughs - maniacally, but not unkindly. Phil knows what he means. “Sounds pretty fucking optimistic to me.”

“It’s meant to be.”

“Then I’m in.” Dan stretches out and shakes Phil’s hand. “We’ll never have to say sorry again.”

-

At midnight, they slope up the stairs and into their respective rooms. Dan lends Phil some nightclothes, which he then changes into - they fit almost perfectly. He checks his email - nothing - and checks himself. He cannot quite comprehend this present day. Meaning, _this feels rather enormous._

When Phil goes to the bathroom, toiletry bag in hand, the gentle glow of a lamp soaks out from under the door; clearly, Dan doesn’t intend on going to sleep just yet. Phil doesn’t see the point of asking what he’s doing, so he returns to his room without another second’s thought.

He’s among the unknown. There’s a tug in his chest for a return to normality, but, really, is there anything to return to? Since Ronan - since university, even - his life consisted of the same four quadrants, the same directions. Here, he is scared and holed up and under threat, but is he worse off? He isn’t alone. He isn’t aimless.

He is startled to comprehend what it means. He doesn’t want his old life back; he doesn’t want this life. He wants another one. The desire has manifested into a fraction of dawn on the horizon. If only he could reach out and take it for his own. 

When this is over, things need to change. Once he’s escaped from this, he will have fought to stay alive. Something you fight for shouldn’t be something you then return to hating. This isn’t the mark of an end and a beginning, it’s a reason. This is a turning point.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> phil adapts to this new life.

Phil can’t sleep.

His mind won’t stop spinning, his body can’t stop tossing and turning, his eyes can’t stop opening and closing. His world is a pronounced lump on his back. The rain drums impatiently on the window panes. There’s too much light; there isn’t enough cool air. The universe is so large but so small; the possibilities and calculations and questions send his limits ballooning outwards. There is no end, and he cannot sleep.

Insomnia isn’t a stranger to him. When it comes, which is often, he reads, or listens to music. When Ronan was still around, the two of them would brave the cold tiles of the kitchen floor and sit there together, drinking water and talking only when there was something to say.

This shouldn’t be any different. Only, when he closes his eyes, it isn’t nothing for him to feel. There is a something, very threatening and very alien. Only, Ronan isn’t here anymore, and Dan is.

Phil can hardly imagine what Dan’s nightmares are like. He can’t stop seeing the corpse of Toby Stanford, and he didn’t know him. To Dan, Toby’s body must have been a night horror come to life, a part of him lying sickly on the floor.

Phil clambers from the bed, hand outstretched in order to feel the wall. The door drags along the carpet, but makes barely a creak as he opens it. The landing is dark; the window in the front door swims in a streetlamp’s brilliance, visible from the top of the stairs; the light still slips out of Dan’s room.

He pads along and comes to an uncertain stop. In a moment of vacillation, he considers heading back, but the familiar murmur of voices - he must be watching something, he decides - drifts to him. The contrast between him and Dan is tangible, loneliness ruling on either side of the door.

Phil knocks.

“Yeah,” comes Dan’s reply, a question and an acceptance.

He enters and walks forward, not wanting to stop moving, and comes to a stop somewhere between the doorway and the bed. The room is almost identical in layout to Phil’s, but, despite only arriving a day earlier, Dan has marked it his own. Its clutter marks the weariness of a man left alone. Items from home litter the shelves; piles of clothes, some little, some large, slump on the carpet; light from his laptop skitters along the wall and trips on the concaves of his face. A digital clock on the bedside table reads _3:14_.

On top of the duvet, Dan sits with his ankles crossed and his laptop balanced perfectly on his lap. He looks up at Phil, enough of a greeting that Phil feels a little welcome, at least. “You too, huh?”

Phil goes to ask what he’s on about, to point out he can’t just ask that without specifying _what_ , before he comes to realise he knows exactly what Dan’s on about. The expectant look on Dan’s face says he does, too. How peculiar it is, that he knows both so much and so little. The sense eddies between them.

“Are you surprised?” Phil asks. He’s not surprised that Dan’s awake, certainly: now that he looks, the rumbling bruises under Dan’s eyes show he hasn’t slept properly in days.

“I stopped being surprised a long time ago.” Dan picks up his laptop with two hands, and shuffles to the left.

“You’re so melodramatic,” Phil remarks, picking his way through the mess to come to the other side of the bed. “You could put your efforts into other things.”

“Like?” Dan says, dryly.

“Tidying up.” Phil plants himself next to him. “This place is a mess.”

“Hey,” Dan interjects. “Listen. We’re gonna be getting to know each other pretty well in the coming days.”

“So?” Phil swings his legs up onto the bed, pushing his back up to the headboard.

“So you should know I’m a messy person.”

“As I said,” he replies, “it’s because you waste your energy on melodrama.”

“Listen,” Dan warns.

“You keep telling me to, and I am. Maybe that’s my problem.”

“Fuck you, arsehole,” Dan exclaims, mouth caving in to a brisk, amused gasp.

“Sorry.” Phil grimaces. “Have I overstepped a line?”

“You did that when you told me you murder houseplants. This should be the least of your problems.”

Phil hums to himself, looking from Dan to his laptop, then to the wall opposite. A huddle of photos in embellished frames cluster on one end of the wall: snapshots of warm colours, old vintage prints in monochrome. With the timber beams arching as a rib cage overhead, the heat emanating from the room, and the disarray of sentiment pulsing through all reaches of the space, it is as if this room is the heart of the house. It suits Dan: despite his mistakes and doubts, it’s clear he operates from the heart as well as the head. He’s scrupulous. Phil’s blocked off his deep feelings for so long the arteries must be clotted.

The conversation has left him more comforted than he was before. They have a rapport, and an assumed trust; Dan has a sense of humour and an intrinsic acceptance of the state they’re in. He’s working hard to stop his problems leaking out, without forgetting them, without letting them be forgotten - Phil recognises and appreciates that.

Jutting his chin out at the computer in Dan’s lap, he inquires, “What are you watching?”

“Some Channel Four show.”

“Can I watch?”

“You’ll have to,” Dan supposes, bidding him permission to stay, and tilts his laptop so Phil can see it too.

Phil stays until he’s about to fall asleep, and then he stays longer; if he moves, he fears he’ll wake himself up again, so he drifts to sleep where he sits, head drooping down towards his chest.

-

The next day feels oddly quiet. They eat a breakfast of tea and coffee with little conversation passing between them. Dan shows him how to use the dodgy hob, and tells him to avoid the left side of the fifth step because it creaks, and offers to put software on his laptop to protect it from being tracked. He says it so casually, as if it’s commonplace. Phil obliges, of course, with his hands tucked in his pockets and the sun in his eyes. Afterwards, Dan disappears to his room, where he works away at the bank account’s coding - as he has done for days, Phil knows; Phil sits in the TV room, daytime telly garbling away, and looks through photographs. That task becomes menial and boring, so he finds a book to read and leafs gradually through the first few chapters. The sun rises in the sky; the heat ricochets, louder and louder, off the walls. Paranoia paces the back of his mind, parsing corridor after corridor of questions and outcomes, but never daring to come forward and fully breach his task. The knowledge of who they are and what they’re doing blankets them - contains them - but doesn’t protrude or suffocate.

Hunger mutters in his stomach. He’s seen the same perfume advert ten times. He’s read the same line of his book seven times. In his head, he watches the strangers walk the opposite way down the road, away from the Internet cafe, away from him. In his head, he watches two people leave the ticket queue without buying anything. In his head, he sees Toby Stanford’s corpse, sees Cadence Collins’ house crawling with police, sees himself putting the photos of Dan Howell stepping into a taxi into his bag for the last time. Hunger rumbles in his stomach.

Phil puts down his book, hooking it on the sofa to mark his page, and slopes upstairs. With a diversion into his room to crack open a window, he continues along the landing. He finds himself knocking on Dan’s door once more.

“It’s me,” he says, coming into the room.

“Well,” Dan replies, “It wasn’t going to be anyone else.” He sits on his bed, laptop on his lap, eyes narrowed. The digital clock beside him reads _13:56_.

Phil stands in the space between the door and the bed, arms crossed against his chest. “We should eat something.”

Dan looks to the time on the corner of his screen, frowns for a second, then returns his gaze to Phil. “Yeah, I suppose we should.” He shuts his laptop shut and pushes it to one side of him, swings his legs off the bed and stands. He smiles. “Okay?”

Slowly, Phil nods, turns on his heel, and leads the way back downstairs. In the kitchen, Dan tells him to sit down while he finds food, so he does, tapping his fingers on the table and studying the world outside the window as Dan disappears into the larder.

“The only decent thing we have is pasta,” he says, coming back through and planting a kilo bag onto the table in front of Phil.

“I like pasta,” he says. Dan untwists the bag, grabs a pan from a cupboard at his waist, and pours pasta into it. The noise is a loud clatter.

“So do I.” He tugs the bag upright again. “But I’ve had it several days straight.” He proceeds to fill the pan with water and place it on the hob; he drops the bag, sealed once again, onto the counter beside it. Dragging a chair out, he plants himself opposite Phil and stares at him, placing his hands on the table in front of him. The whole procedure is a chain of distinct noises.

“What?” Phil asks. Dan’s stared at him for several long seconds.

“We need more food.”

“But I like pasta.” With a blurred bubbling, the water starts boiling.

“But I’ve only eaten pasta and ready meals for several days.” Dan slumps back in his chair, finally freeing Phil of his gaze. “And we’re running out of cash.” ‘ _We_ ,’ he said, evoking a challenge out of Phil before he realises it as the truth: there’s no _me_ or _you_ anymore, but the both of them operating as a team to survive.

Phil, mirroring Dan’s action, falls back in his own seat as the implications of Dan’s statement fall on him. His jaw slackens, and he watches him for a brief moment; Dan watches him back. “You want me to go out and get some.”

Dan nods. “I know it’s not ideal, but I can’t go out and do it, can I?”

Fear rustles in his chest, but he brushes it aside. He has to do this. “I have enough in my bank account to last us a while.”

“You’re on paid leave?” Dan checks.

“Should be,” he says. He checked his emails this morning - _okay Phil, sorry to hear that, hope to see you soon_.

“They’ll be monitoring ATMs and cash withdrawals. I suggest -”

He’s interrupted as the saucepan boils over, the water hissing angrily on the heat. Dan leaps up to take the lid off; they both watch as the water level retreats. Exhaling, Dan returns to his seat. “I suggest,” he continues, “that you drive at least an hour away. Do you have family near?”

“Yes, but why -”

“You told your work you had a family emergency. You should try your best to uphold that story.”

“But they’ve seen my photos. They’ve seen me buying train tickets and visiting Reading. They _know_ about our connection,” Phil stresses. The futility is pounding into his heart rate.

“They don’t know that you found me,” Dan points out, infuriatingly calm except for the pointed edge to his voice. “You’re completely off the grid out here. They haven’t found me, so they haven’t found you.”

“They’ll find me when I use an ATM.”

“And we use that to our advantage!” Dan enthuses. He leans forward in his seat. “They’re going to find you taking out money in a city miles from here. They’re going to know you said you had a family emergency. They’re going to know your family are nearby. What they’re going to see is someone who had a morbid fascination with a murder, and who now has to leave home due to an unfortunate event.”

“I don’t know, Dan,” he says, as Dan stares earnestly at him. He hides his face in his hands. “I don’t know. I don’t know. It sounds...logical, but these people are smart. They won’t believe it.”

“Maybe they won’t,” he allows, “but it doesn’t matter. As long as we don’t give them any reason to suspect you’ve found me, or where we are.”

“And how do I do that?”

“Park your car in a residential area, far from the speed cameras, so they won’t know what your vehicle looks like.”

“Will that work?”

“I don’t know. But I don’t really think it matters if it works or not…” His voice loosens, and he trails off. He gives Phil a meaningful look.

“We just have to do everything we can to make it work,” Phil finishes for him, finally understanding.

“Exactly. Every measure we can take, we take it. If we can take money out miles from here, we take money out miles from here. If we can try and hide our car from the cameras, we do it. If we can hope it works, we hope.”

Phil purses his lips. He doesn’t say, _they’re going to find us one day, aren’t they?_ He doesn’t say, _what are we going to do tomorrow? And the day after?_ He says, “I’m going to need a shopping list,” and lets Dan’s relieved smile kindle a tentative hope in him.

“We’ll write one.” A look of recognition passes between them, an affinity pulled tight to accommodate everything they’ve brought with them: acceptance that the path they’ve crashed onto is mired in a gore that will soon be their own, but they will do everything they can to put their destiny off as long as possible - together. To the outside world, they are both ghosts; this separation unites them.

How funny it is, that death births a beginning.

This established, Phil says, “I think the pasta’s cooked.”

“It better be,” Dan declares, his face a different breed of calm than before: resolution, not resignation, poise, not numbness. “I’m fucking starving.”

-

There’s the risk of someone tracking their phones, meaning they can’t call each other, so Phil sets off completely alone. He guides the car out of Wycoller and along the road heading west, and he is alone, and he pulls onto the motorway, and he is alone. With every car that pulls up alongside him, he twists his face away, thinking that he doesn’t have any clue what these people look like. They could be beside him, or behind him, or watching him from a camera somewhere, and he is alone.

His paranoia compels him to take the country roads. He can’t cope with every car that passes maybe being the one to end it all, so he narrows his company to the jalopy he drives and the unkempt bushes of the lanes. His backpack sways in the passenger seat, threatening to topple at every tight bend; the contents is the same, except the package of evidence, which they decided would best be kept back at the house. There’s no way of telling what option is safer out of sticking together or splitting up: together, they can protect each other, but they may give their game away; apart, they risk one getting caught and spilling everything onto the ground without the other ever knowing what happened.

“The only thing we can do,” Dan told Phil before he left, “is take each occasion as it comes. All we can do is our best.”

“No regrets,” Phil echoed the conversation from last night, and Dan repeated it back.

“Be safe. I’ll be here when you get back.”

Now, Phil replays the conversation over and over. The countryside is lost to houses as the hour and a half’s drive fades into its conclusion, and he is alone, but Dan is back in Wycoller, safe with the evidence, and Phil is about to get food and money, and the gang don’t know that he’s found Dan. If he remembers these facts, and if he’s cautious without being suspicious, he’ll be fine. So that’s what he does.

They’ll be fine.

He finds the supermarket, and keeps driving into a residential estate, where he parks his car and throws his bag into the boot. He has it for continuity, but even if he were really still working his way up north to his family, he wouldn’t carry the extra weight whilst shopping. Every detail is vital.

It’s a short walk to the store, but it’s made longer by the incessant apprehension lodged in his head; rather than a series of mutated fears, it’s stagnated. Suspended in time. The feeling of an ending that won’t cease, the tick of a clock that won’t arrive.

From the ATM, he withdraws two hundred pounds - the largest amount he dares to take. Any more than that, he could raise suspicions, or be mugged on the street. Neither of those are appealing options, and the sum should last them a couple of weeks.

The city is familiar to him, but he doesn’t bump into anyone familiar whilst in the store. He finds everything they decided upon within twenty minutes, and leaves as soon as he can; the shopping fills two bags, and he lugs them back to his car. In with the cans of food are two phones: cheap Nokias, they should work as burner phones in a severe emergency. He feels better knowing they have this option.

Or perhaps it feels better because they are constructing something between the two of them, separate from the outside world, a fortress of their own to eke out their lives in this siege.

-

Tonight, they sit in Dan’s room with mugs of own-brand hot chocolate, watching whatever comes to mind until their heart beats slow and their thoughts don’t stick with every breath. Languid, Phil bids him goodnight and stumbles back into his own room. It’s not so daunting now he’s waited out the insomnia with company, and thoughts can’t assemble themselves in his head, and the bed is so comfortable, and he is so, so tired.

-

“Hey, Phil,” Dan greets him as he enters the TV room. He looks mischievous even as he stands there, in front of Phil, biting into a smile and both hands behind his back. Looming over him, his joke seems more sinister than it should.

“What.” Phil keeps his book clasped in two hands. He’s found a novel he enjoys; not only is there a whole library in his bedroom, but he’s discovered an even more vast collection stuffed into the rafters of the attic. The family friend has a modest spy-novel collection, and Phil thinks he’s allowed to read them despite the circumstances - he can suffer through Dan’s minor teasing.

“Guess what time it is,” he incites him, and Phil makes a point of rolling his eyes. Dan unveils the box of blonde hair dye from behind his back, and Phil stops in his disdain to widen his eyes.

“Dan, where did you get that?” he cautions.

“That’s right,” Dan continues, raising his eyebrows and nodding. He sharpens his grin into something innocuously malicious. “Blonde hair time. I’ve given you a day for you to settle in, but the action starts now.”

“Where. The hell. Did you get that.”

“Got it on my way up here, in case I needed a more drastic disguise,” he explains, hand holding the box flying out to the side in a casual gesture. “But I think you need it more than I do.”

Phil narrows his eyes. “What do you mean by that?”

“I’ve cut my hair, got contacts and glasses for when I’m in public. I don’t look like Dan Howell, but you still look like Phil Lester.” He waves the box in Phil’s face. “No regrets, _Phil_.”

“Don’t you think we should wait -”

“No, I don’t.” Dan’s expression turns grave. “We agreed to take every precaution.”

“But I’m allegedly with my family. They need to see me in that area.”

Dan shakes his head. “But you’re not with your family. You’re here. So you need to disappear; either they think you’ve gone to be with your family, or you’re hiding with me, but you have to disappear.”

“So you’re not doing this for a joke,” Phil checks gently.

“No.” Then, he smiles. “But I do think it will be fucking hilarious.”

“Is that a good thing?”

“Think of it as a silver lining,” he goads.

“For _you_ , maybe,” Phil retorts. “Fine, I’ll do it,” he gives in, and prises the box out of Dan’s limp hand.

“Do it for comedy,” he says, and Phil shoves a hand in his face.

-

“It looks awful.” Phil pouts into the mirror, even as he stifles a rueful laugh.

“No, it doesn’t,” Dan says from behind him. “You look different - actually, no you don’t.” When Phil glares at him in the reflection, he collapses into laughter.

“Dan! Stop laughing!”

Dan tries to calm himself and speak, but can’t, so Phil sits there as Dan doubles over and his face goes red.

“Did you know your eyes disappear when you laugh?” Phil intones, a pathetic attempt at revenge.

Dan finally manages to speak. “Speaking of eyes, I’ll show you some shit you can do with makeup. You’ll look like a different person.”

“There’s _more_?” he exclaims.

“Do you…” Dan pauses, lets the vowel drop into silence, “ _Want_ to end up dead in a ditch?” His voice spins the line between muted and pointed, he looks at Phil and shakes his head from side to side, minutely, as a shrug.

“That’s not  _really_ going to happen,” he says, standing, because he knows it could.

Dan leaves the room, and tilts his head back to call to him. “You’re right. It’ll be something much worse. Now, c’mon, fill in your eyebrows.”

-

“For God’s sake,” Phil complains, as Dan sniggers for the fourth time that day.

Turning back to his cooking, Dan says, “I’m sorry. I keep forgetting, and then I see you again, and _God_. It’s so bad.” He laughs to himself.

“You were the one who cut it! You did a shit job.”

“Maybe. I did the eyebrows better.”

To be fair, he did. Dan being skilled with eyeshadow and a brush is perhaps the biggest surprise Phil’s had in awhile; it was unsettling to see himself with bushy eyebrows, a narrower nose, and a squarer jaw. They’d succeeded: he no longer looked like Phil Lester, and he hated it. The only good thing is knowing he won’t be recognised in shops.

“The eyebrows _came off_ , though. I have to live with this.” Phil points a finger at his hair. Dan thought to buy a toner, too, so the shade isn’t an awful yellow, but it still looks garish, and they both know it.

Dan struggles for words. “It’s…” He holds out a hand. “It’s constant _entertainment_ ,” he settles on, like it’s a good thing. He knows it isn’t, and snorts again. “You’re taking one for the team.”

“If you don’t stop, I’ll...Suffocate you with pasta.”

“Is that an effective method of murder?”

Phil crosses his arms. “I’m sure some bastard will find out.”

The bastard in question grins, and yelps as the water boils over in his saucepan.

“Need help?” Phil asks coldly.

Dan waves him away. “No thanks.” He goes quiet and grins, as if a funny thought has come to mind and he’s considering if he should say it. His voice lilting on amusement, he says it anyway: “Your hair will blind me if you come too close.”

Phil slams a hand on the table. “This is your fault!” he insists, almost shrieking.

“Your roots were showing, I did you a favour.” Dan composes himself long enough to look properly at Phil and ask, “Are you really bothered by this?”

Sighing, Phil slides into a seat. “Obviously not.”

Dan has the courtesy to look relieved. Perhaps he is - perhaps he was bothered. “Good.”

“That is _not_ an invitation to take the piss.”

“Or?”

“I’ll dye your hair green in your sleep.”

“You and whose hair dye?”

“Says one fugitive to the other,” he remarks, and lowers his head with a thump onto the table. “Should we be taking this more seriously?”

“What?”

“What what?”

“What should we be taking more seriously? Your hair mishaps?”

Phil shakes his head, and the movement drives his cheek into the wood. “No. This. Being on the run.”

“Firstly,” Dan begins, drawing away from the oven and leaning on the work surface. “You know that we take it seriously.”

Phil thinks back, to the fire and the conversation and the lament in their voices. “Mm.”

“Secondly, who says we have to go about this a certain way? We do what we do, and it’s fine.”

“Unless we get ourselves killed.”

“Unless that, yeah,” Dan allows. “But there’s no one to complain, is there?”

“No. It’s just you and me.” Phil smiles, because the fact should belong to a good feeling, not a bad one. Dan’s face agrees.

“Just, you, me,” he drawls, “and your hair.”

“Is my hair a person now?”

“It’s brighter than you.”

Phil huffs a half-offended laugh, but he can’t pretend he’s not entertained. “That must be the cleverest thing you’ve ever said.”

“Cleverer than my analysis of Kanye’s first album?”

“Definitely. Definitely cleverer than that.” Phil pushes himself upright. “I need some pasta.”

“Right, because pasta makes everything better,” Dan mocks, free of malice, as he takes the pan off the heat and drains the water into the sink. A pillar of steam rises into his face.

“It’s a comfort food,” he says, leaning down and grabbing two plates from a cupboard.

“Phil, we have it every day.”

He reasons, “We need a lot of comfort.”

-

The next week passes in the same way: Phil takes photos, reads books, or watches reruns of shows on Dave and Channel 4; Dan slaves away on his computer, researching or hacking. He’s got the new task of finding ways to transfer money into Phil’s account without it showing up. Other than meal times, the evenings are the only times he emerges from his work; they uncover a stack of board games in the attic, under the spare sofa, and while the evenings away with Scrabble or a random game show on the TV. The timing is good: in the summer, the central heating isn’t needed, and the long days make their electricity bill low, but the issue of what to do when the bill is issued isn’t completely forgotten. Dan knows the landlady will be charged, not them, but the bill is sure to raise suspicion, unless they find a way to evade it; he suggests hacking into the system, but Phil points out that he’s already on several online businesses’ wanted lists. Hacking isn’t an option. They can hope she doesn’t notice, or they can run away.

“I know which one I’d rather,” Dan remarks.

“It’s not about that, though, is it?”

“Says who?”

Dan looks at Phil. Phil looks at Dan. “Fine. Get into her account, see how long we’ve got till the bill is issued.”

“Fucking thank you.”

“No more than that, though,” he warns. “I don’t want us to be real criminals.”

“Too late,” Dan says, biting his lip as he taps away at his keyboard. “Aha! Okay. I have good news and bad news.”

“You know what I want first.”

“Good news is we have another six months.”

Phil lets himself relax. “What’s the bad news?”

“We’re real criminals.”

“ _Dan_. What did you do?”

“Nothing!” Dan shuts his laptop and puts it to one side. “I’m just pointing out that nothing we’re doing here is very legal. I’m just calibrating your morals.”

“...Thanks.”

“Anytime. Scrabble?”

-

While Dan stays cooped up at home, Phil goes to the local shop and stocks up on their supplies, when needed. Once, he travels the extra distance to a larger supermarket - not the same one as before - to buy the supplies the corner store doesn’t have; he comes home with bushier eyebrows, a thinner nose, and a wider jaw. No one gives him a second look.

He announces his arrival as he slams the door, “It’s me,” so Dan knows he doesn’t need to hide, or jump out of a window, or anything else their fearful imaginations might drive them to do. Dropping the bags onto the kitchen table, he bounds up the stairs and only stops once he’s stood in Dan’s doorway.

“I’ve been thinking,” he proclaims.

The worry sits on his shoulder. It gnaws into his skull, as it has for the week or so he’s been here; it’s teeth bite harder, now he’s been back into the outside world. Questions coarse through him, fermenting with age. He needs to say them, to spit them and their bitter taste out, and he needs Dan to listen as he does it. He’s thought it before, but the realisation comes anew: how entangled they have become in such a short time, how an early ending has pushed them to an even earlier beginning.

In the garden - the garden Phil hasn’t set foot in - the earth is thirsting for rain. The plush green of the trees is transient. They’re surrounded by an unsustainable world; the bitter taste lasts in his mouth.

“Okay,” Dan replies, not looking up. He presses the enter key - and again - and again. When Phil says nothing, he flicks his gaze upwards, and - startled - keeps it there.

Phil sees himself reflected in Dan’s expression. The anguish, the weight tipping down his spine and pushing him forwards, the pained patience.

Dan understands. He pats the mattress beside him. Phil sits on the creased patch of sheets.

“I’ve been thinking,” he says again.

“Okay.”

Now is not the time for harsh comments.

“Why haven’t they said I’m with you?”

Dan sucks in a breath and nods. It’s an issue he must have anticipated, even if he didn’t know it. “Explain.”

“If they’re using the police to find us, why aren’t they giving them all the information they have? If everyone was looking for me, the search would be a lot easier. But they’re not. My name and picture aren’t in a single newspaper. The photos they stole haven’t been released. If they wanted the police to find us, they’d pursue all leads. Even if they think I’m with family now, they know I was involved at one point. I am a lead.”

“What’s your point?” Dan asks, because he looks sobered and subdued, because he knows what the point is.

“They aren’t waiting for the police to do their dirty work. What if, in reality, they’re stopping the police from finding us?”

“Then why would they give the anonymous tip?”

“To scare us?” he suggests. “To make it harder for you to hide? There’s only so much power they have over the police force. They can afford to give you away, because that’s what they want, but they can’t afford to give me away to them. They need to ruin your life, but I wasn’t part of the plan, and they can’t explain how on earth I’m related to you without giving away all the photos and leads I had. That would risk the police finding us before they do.”

“Why do they want to get to us first?”

“To be sure we don’t expose them.” His heart is beating fast, his words are blood, still warm, spurting from a severed artery. “They could be using the police - their contacts in the police, I mean, y’know - to hunt us down. They get the info they need, and then misdirect the police. I don’t know. _I don’t know_. I just know they want us gone, and I know I’m not on a wanted poster. It doesn’t add up. There has to be a reason.”

“So you think they’re just using the police to help the search. Not complete it. You think it’ll be them knocking on the door, not some people in uniforms.”

“That’s the conclusion I’ve come to, yeah.” Phil expels a breath he’s had locked up inside. “I don’t know why. They could wipe our stories out with one strike. We’re not a threat.”

“No,” Dan says, hardly above a whisper. “Maybe we should become one.”

Phil turns on him with a start. “What do you mean?”

He shakes his head, dislodging the thought. “I don’t know. Never mind.”

“Okay. Do you understand what I’m saying? It’s hard to explain why they haven’t told the police about me, but they haven’t, and there -”

“There’s a reason,” Dan finishes, assures, comforts. “I think you’re right.”

“Thank you.” Somehow, it’s possible for the world to feel even smaller. “It’s not the most comforting of revelations.”

“No.” Swinging his legs around and planting his feet on the floor, Dan stretches out his arms. “I hope you bought more toner while you were out. Your hair’s going mouldy.”

“You’re mouldy.”

“Can’t you come up with a good comeback, Phil?” he teases.

“No,” he replies, with a false sob. “They weren’t on offer.”

Dan pats him consolingly on the shoulder, and stands up. “Thank you for going out. I appreciate it.”

“Thank you.”

They nod to each other, and Dan leaves the room, leaving Phil to contemplate alone.

There should be nowhere to step. Yet, Phil can go out in public without anyone knowing his connection to the Credit Card Killer. There is a reason: that’s one thing he knows about these people. There is a reason, even if it’s one they can only grasp blindly at. The police haven’t found them yet, which means the group haven’t, either. The police don’t know about Phil, which means the group doesn’t want them to. Conclusion: the police won’t find them, the group will. It doesn’t make them any more fucked than they already were, but it warps the perspective. Nothing is what it seemed. Only the outcome will be the same, and it is the outcome, out of the whole of this series of events, that Phil wants to change most.

-

“I hate this,” Phil declares. He sits, slouched, on the window chair in Dan’s room, knees bent and his hand resting on his ankles. Black drops down past the window, dark sky rattling with wind, darker silhouettes of trees scuttling back and forth, darkest shadows eclipsing the undergrowth. Where the light falls, blades of grass glint with rain. The moon bathes in a turmoil of cloud; the gloom creeps closer. In Dan’s room, only the lamp is on, so they ease into the nighttime; the slope of the ceiling disturbs the even fall of the light, casting the walls in a delicate, whimsical pattern of peach and soot.

“What?” Dan inquires, delayed, from the refuge of his bed, eyes focused on his laptop.

“ _T_ _his_.” Phil waves a hand at the window. “Not knowing what’s out there. Not knowing who’s going to find us and when.”

Dan snaps his eyes up and down again. “You’re paranoid.”

Breathing out sharply through his nose, Phil turns back to the window. “Maybe.”

For the most part, he’s fallen in love with Wycoller and all its quirks: how the roads and houses are woven together so tightly they’re muscle tissue, how the trees outnumber the people and their harmonies dominate the air. How the village feels like a secret no one can possibly break. They live here. Here, they are alone - the only way they can possibly be. Wycoller lets them be. Here, a secret is not a thing, but a place.

But at night, and when he’s more paranoid than usual, he hates the shadows for sticking to the paths like dried blood, and the corners for jutting into his fervent stare like shards of glass. Movement skirts around his eyes. Wycoller is hidden, but sometimes it hides others.

At night, Wycoller is full of the whispers and echoes of life hidden. At night, they are more ghost than human. Ghosts, as in frail and powerless and gone; life, as in secure and potent and everything they are missing. Ghosts do not belong in the land of the living. They can’t fight this.

A shred of movement catches his eye. His fists tighten, his fingers clamping to the window sill. “Something’s moving.”

“Where?” Short, sharp. Can’t afford excess words, excess time. Wycoller’s isolation makes it dangerously timeless.

“Out there.”

“It’s trees, you dipstick.”

“You _know_ what I mean.” Phil forces himself to unscrew his gaze and look to Dan, if only to flip him off. He needs to free himself of that world and all its possibilities.

“Sorry.” Dan pushes his laptop off his lap and strides over to him; he perches himself on the other end of the window chair. It’s less of a chair, and more of a thin mattress lying on the floor, and they’re too lanky for them both to fit, but Phil doesn’t say anything. “Fun fact about you,” he murmurs. “Go.”

Phil can’t help but look back outside. “I’m terrified.”

“A _fun_ fact, you spork.” Dan jabs him with his foot, forcing him to look back to him. “Go,” he urges.

“I like you, ‘cause you’re the only thing I really know in this hell.”

In a deep, dark voice, Dan rumbles, “I am unknowable.”

Phil brings his legs up towards his chest to rest his head on his knee. “I have another: you’re pretentious as hell.”

“You wouldn’t be wrong,” he says, leaning back against the protrusion of wall. “You wouldn’t be wrong.”

-

“Dan!” Phil appears at Dan’s bedroom door. “I’m going to the shop.”

“And...why are you telling me this?” Dan asks, frowning at him.

“Because you’re coming with me.”

“Nope,” he declines, scoffing in disbelief. “No, I am not.”

“When was the last time you went outside?”

Dan says nothing.

“Exactly. And I want you with me. So, you’re coming.” Phil crosses the metre or so between them and tugs at Dan’s arm.

“If I go,” Dan starts, like he’s already decided he’s coming, “will you stop annoying me?”

“Naturally.”

“Right, then I am on my way.”

-

Wycoller is quieter than usual. A gauze of brilliant blue drapes from the sky, the scent of sweet peas tiptoes through the air, the clouds have scarpered away. It’s a world on pause. A world in waiting.

They drag their feet through the dry grass, skip along the bridges, catch the shimmer of the water in their eyes. As they go, Phil witters on about his current read, and Dan listens attentively, face tilted into the sky. His skin is striated with sunlight and the dappling camouflage of the trees. Mindless, he’s smiling.

It’s times like this that Phil thinks Dan is a waste here, a firework packaged in brown parcel paper. He’s seen Dan in those moments where his flames burst from the seams: when the hacking or researching or thinking takes him somewhere ablaze, he burns. He’s pyrophoric. This predicament has handed him a short, bright life, perhaps, but what is the point of a bright life if no one is there to see it?

Phil’s seen it, but he is only one person, and there are so many moments. Dan doesn’t deserve this. No one deserves this.

“You’ll blind yourself, y’know,” he remarks. Dan looks down to face him.

“What?”

“If you look at the sun like that,” he continues, acting nonchalant, kicking at the grass at his feet.

“My eyes are closed.”

“Then you’ll fall into the river.” Phil grins.

“I would hope you’d prevent that from happening.”

“That doesn’t sound like a good plan.”

“No,” Dan admits, laughing kindly, “It doesn’t. Never mind.”

They walk on in silence. The shop sits, patient, on the edge of their view.

“Why did you go into customer service?” Phil asks. It hasn’t made sense to him, since he met Dan, how someone so skilled and smart would give up their passions and talents to a life behind a desk.

“I thought we agreed not to talk about that,” Dan replies. Jaw steadfast. _That_ , meaning _our old lives_. _That_ , meaning _everything I was and can no longer be._

“Hypothetically, then. Why would one go into customer service, if they can use a computer better than they can socialise?”

“I’m too offended to answer,” Dan says. They stop by the doorway, falling into a shadow. “What did you need to buy?”

“A manual.” Phil shoves open the door, and holds it open.

“What?”

“Dan Howell 101.” Phil steps in, and it slides shut slowly enough for him to hear Dan’s climbing bark of a laugh.

In front of the newspapers, Phil stands. He first met Dan here. Dan came to him, then, but now he stands outside, waiting for him. How much has changed, he thinks, and how much is still the same.

Whether the thought is a question or a statement, he is not prepared to decide.

-

“Here.” Phil announces his arrival with a smile and a suggestion, and offers the bag, loaf of bread sticking out, to Dan. Dan kicks himself off the wall and takes it. “Thank you,” he adds, because he feels like he should.

“No problem.” Swinging at his thigh, the bag bumps into both of their legs as they work their way back home. The sky is still just as clear overhead, but it feels more severe somehow - the final flash of a supernova.

“Sorry,” he adds, because he feels he wants to.

“It’s a valid question. I just don’t want to think of the answer.”

“It might do you good,” he suggests. The sun pushes heat down their necks. Prising one of the bag handles from Dan’s grip, Phil peers inside and pulls out a bag of sherbet - impulse buy, last minute, at the counter. He keeps hold of the handle once he’s done. “One day. To think about it.”

“I know. But - easier said than done, right? You know, like, there are things you’d be better thinking about but don’t.”

There are. Things Ronan said to him when he left that he hasn’t thought about since. Thoughts that struck at midnight that he hasn’t revisited.

“There are,” he says aloud. He doesn’t want Dan to be alone in that.

“That was a long pause.”

“I like to be unpredictable,” Phil says, smiling even as he says it. Dan laughs - two distinct sounds, _ha ha!_ tapering off into the muffled sound behind his hand and the creased edges of his eyes. It means he isn’t alone. Which means Phil’s done his job.

From then until they reach their home, they walk in silence, Dan holding one handle, Phil holding the other. Every time Phil lags behind, Dan looks like he wants to complain, but he never does.

When they reach their front door, Phil tugs the key from his back pocket and drops it in Dan’s outstretched hand. Dan nods in thanks, stabs the key into the lock, and leans on the handle, as Phil always does.

  
The door falls open before he turns the key. Which it never does.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> plans have to be made.

“Did you lock the door?” Dan asks him, eyes filed sharp and pinning him to the air behind him.

“I can’t remember.” Phil’s surprised he’s managed to get the words out. Fear is squeezing him into the vein of a leaf.

“You need to, damn it! Did you lock the door?”

A stutter of movement, Phil shakes his head. “I thought you did?” Saying it outloud only makes him feel smaller.

“Well obviously not, if you have the fucking thing!”

“All this is is that I forgot to lock the door, isn’t it?” he hopes, as Dan pulls his fingers across his cheeks. “This isn’t -”

“There’s only one way to check, isn’t there? Oh, fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck.” Exploding into panicked action, Dan throws open the door.

Inside, silence. Inside Phil’s head, a calamity.

“Shouldn’t we be quieter? Catch them unawares?” The shock keeps him level, but it will soon give way to a landslide. Phil grapples for some ledge, some handhold. He finds none from Dan, whose face is melting into panic, whose fear is gushing out of him as a lahar.

“There’s no way they’re still here! They’ll be long gone. My laptop. Crap. All the evidence. _Fuck_.” Dan’s vehemence is a bullet to Phil’s chest, and he flinches in the darkness. He watches as Dan throws himself up the stairs, the darkness swallowing him whole. “How is it so dark here, for fuck’s sake! It’s broad fucking daylight!” The landing light sparks into life, as Dan bangs a fist against the switch.

“We keep the curtains shut,” Phil whispers to himself. He can feel his fingers start to quake. The tremors of a safe haven crumbling resonate through his whole body. Every measure they’d taken, compromised, taken alive.

Dan is silent. He says nothing. Phil can hear him pulling his room apart, thundering down the landing and into the attic. Is everything gone? Is his only fuel the far flung hope of a dying man?

Phil trips into room after room. The remains of the logs in the fireplace; the bare bones of the light in the toilet window; the crumbs on their plates from lunch. There’s no sign of an intruder, but that is no consolation. Cadence Collins died and not even the dogs barked. If they were here, they could still be here.

Fragments, debris from a bomb, litter his viscera. It’s hard to breathe. Hard to move. Dan still hasn’t said anything. It’s seconds that feel like minutes that feel like hours.

Phil inches into the last room. The curtains drop from ceiling to carpet. He heads for them, arm wavering but outstretched.

Seconds that are minutes that are hours.

He pushes them aside. A scrape, as the metal rings skirt along the curtain rail.

There is no one there.

Behind them, out in the garden, he can see nothing. The world lives on, basking in burnished sunshine. It’s only back here, in their house, that he lives in rotting shadows.

The relief should mark the end of the ordeal, but the detritus won’t be dislodged. He feels it before he knows it: their safe haven is finite. There is a lifespan, the end of which they will arrive at.

 _We have to be ready_ , he decides. Currently, they’re not living in ignorance: Dan’s persistent hacking and research shows that. But they are also defenceless.

_We aren’t ready._

“Phil?”

Dropping his hand, dismissing a rattling breath, he looks round to look at Dan.

Dan takes a step into the room. He looks shaken, pale, but recomposed. Reassembled. The split in the curtains casts a trail of light that digs a trench, diagonally, through the room. “It’s still there. Everything’s still there,” he says. “You?”

Phil shakes his head. Words don’t seem to capture the terror raging in his chest. “Nothing. Everything.”

“Whatever,” Dan says. _I know what you mean_. “It was a false alarm, then.”

“Yeah,” he utters.

“Holy shit,” Dan gasps, and collapses onto the sofa. “Holy shit.”

“I know.” Phil takes a number of tentative steps forward, and perches on the edge of the seat.

Dan’s chest heaves, up and down, up and down. His breathing is loud, but necessary. “Are you okay?”

“Mhm.” Phil lifts a hand for the pair of them to inspect it, and finds himself shaking. The fear and relief in him are equally powerful, and are a solarstorm careering through him. “I’m, um, shaking. Quite a bit.” He emits a jittery laugh - breath toppling onto breath toppling onto breath - and doesn’t sound quite like himself.

Dan lifts his own hand and places it a few centimetres from Phil’s. Phil detects the infinitesimal, but obvious, shake. He stares. “Me, too.”

After a heart beat, Dan’s hand crosses the final few inches, and captures Phil’s hand in his. Finger interlocked with finger, it doesn’t stop their shaking. Dan’s grip is firmer than Phil’s, though - or perhaps Phil’s is firmer than Dan’s, as he is too shocked to move. He stares at the spectacle, their hands hovering in the gap between them, and then at Dan. Dan looks back. His face is stained red, so his eyes look like a warning sign. Their fear leaks out, so what passes between them is a pact they are not yet ready to say outloud.

“Oh my God,” Phil proclaims, and the word chokes in his throat. And he’s sobbing. And there’s water pooling in his eyes. And Dan pulls him into a tight hug. Or maybe Phil pulls Dan into a tight hug. Or maybe Phil falls into him.

Hours compressed into minutes compressed into seconds. They sit there until the shock starts to weep from him, until the trauma starts to ebb, until he feels like he can move again. And, even then, he knows he won’t be able to think the same again.

“This is what you get,” Dan murmurs, once enough time has transpired, once enough breaths have passed their lips that they are sure they are really alive, “for forgetting to lock the damn door.”

Phil laughs wetly. “Sorry.”

“Me, too. I shouldn’t have reacted like that. I probably made it worse by panicking.”

Phil hums in mild agreement.

“You were right: next time, we need to be more covert.”

“Next time?” A question not out of shock, but out of need for affirmation. Are they acknowledging it now, or pushing it aside for another time?

“Next time,” Dan confirms.

Phil lets silence come back to them. He stares out of the corner of his vision. He blinks his eyes clear. He feels Dan’s grip on his shoulder blades. He feels Dan’s heart on the palms of his hands.

“They’re going to find us.”

“I know.”

“It’s only a matter of time.” Phil doesn’t say it to mourn, or lament, but his voice falters under him. He takes a moment to shield himself from the break.

“I know.”

“So we have to be ready when they do,” he declares, voice taking a different, more solid form.

“Yes. I agree. Yes.” Dan leans away, and smooths his hair down. “So, what’s our plan?”

“What?” A bead of water sticks to Phil’s eyelash, so he blinks it away. He presses a hand to his cheek: his skin is clammy. “Now?”

“Yeah, now.”

“Can I at least put the milk in the fridge?”

“You - Are you serious? Right now?”

“It’s this type of thinking,” Phil states, picking himself off the chair and out of the room. Dan follows him. “That helps win a war.”

Dan raises an eyebrow. “A war?” he repeats. “This is a war?”

“How is it not a war?” Bending his knees, Phil picks up the carrier bag - Dan had dropped it just inside the door - and walks towards the kitchen. “If we’re doing this, we’re doing it in the kitchen,” he tells him.

“Because the kitchen feels sufficiently like a room for a war council?” Dan asks, sliding into a seat.

Swinging the milk onto the shelf, Phil shuts the fridge door and looks at him. “I meant because I was putting the milk away and didn’t want to move again, but that works, too. Glad to see you getting into the spirit.”

Sarcastic once more, Dan says, “I am glad we’re on the same page. What are you doing?” This last question is directed at Phil’s hand, which he has pressed to Dan’s cheek.

“The milk is cold, and you look like you have a fever,” he answers honestly. “Doesn’t that feel nice?”

“Well, yeah, but it’s also _weird_. Just.” Dan bats Phil’s hand away from his face. “You’re an idiot.” He says it like he means to say _thank you_.

“It’s to make you feel clever.” Phil cups his face with both hands.

“Yeah, alright. Comforting, as we’re about to devise some sort of battle plan,” Dan says.

“Battle plan,” he echoes. “Aw. You’re learning.” He jabs Dan in the ribs with his elbow, and Dan receives this with another flail of his hand in Phil’s face.

“Thanks, man.”

“No problem, _dude_.”

“Jesus Christ,” Dan mutters into his hands. (Phil laughs. The remains of his terror still clatter around his chest with the movement. It’s odd.) “Okay. Right. Time to do this.”

“Time to not die,” he points out. His mood sobers. The jest slips out from under him, and when he looks back at Dan, he sees he looks as grim as he feels.

“It’s the same thing, isn’t it?” Dan retorts, but his voice lacks the careless vigour his quips normally do.

“We’ve survived this long,” Phil says, quietly, “from hiding. We can’t keep going like this forever. One day…Ah,” he stops short, unable to finish. Heat stumbles around the kitchen like a drunkard, emanating from the floor and the windows and digging under his collar.

“They’ll find us,” Dan completes for him. “So we have to be ready for when they do.”

“Exactly,” he agrees. “But, oh God, how?”

“We find a way to bring them down,” Dan replies, making it sound deceivingly simple. Until now, Phil has been able to ignore the chronic look of fear in his gaze, but now it’s undeniable. Though he sounds mostly composed and clear, he looks on edge, terrified. Until this ends, they will always be caged in this small pocket, where time goes on loop and paranoia accompanies every thought and deed. They need to break out, but so far they haven’t even found a door.

“How?” he demands. “We don’t even know who they are or what they want or how they’re planning to get it.”

“What do we know, then?”

“Nothing.”

“No. No, we must know something, if we know to stay hidden out here.” Dan touches his shoulder. “What do we know?”

Phil takes a breath, and thinks. “We know they don’t want you to tell anyone about the things you found.” He speaks slowly, controlled, side-stepping between memories and worries. “They’ve been following me, and they’ve cut you off from your life. They want you found, and they’ve made you into a criminal. They haven’t told anyone about me.”

“Why?”

“I don’t _know_.”

“Guess!”

“I wasn’t part of the plan. Or, they can’t find a convincing way to incriminate me. Or they took the photos away to stop my search and now assume I’m with family, or something.”

“Or?”

Phil shoots him a pointed look but Dan doesn’t relent. Thinking up reasons surrounding your own capture is strange, and hurts his head - like he’s winding wire around his own throat - but he forces himself to think logically. “Or they can’t control the search if people are looking for me, too.”

“Which means?”

“It means they want to find us themselves. They don’t want the police to know.”

“And what does _t_ _hat_ tell us about them?”

Dan’s expression is almost excited, his eyes earnest as he waits for Phil to answer. Normally, such a sight would amuse him, but now it only annoys him. “Are you going to contribute to any of this, or are you leading me along like a Watson to your Sherlock?”

“I will. Sorry. I just need to hear someone else say what I’m thinking. To know I’m right. Sorry.”

“Do you want me to repeat it so you can take notes?” he asks wryly.

“Phil.” Dan offers a pleading glance. Phil catches sight of the terror once more, and the protest in his chest collapses.

“Sorry. I guess - I guess it means they’re totally separate from the police. Some gang, or maybe a government group. But, Dan, we already _knew_ that was a possibility.”

“Did we?” Dan raises his eyebrows. “I thought we didn’t know anything.”

“I want to hit you right now.”

“The feeling is mutual sometimes, believe me. So, we have two possibilities: either the police are going to come knocking at our door, or the people behind this are.”

“Great, but how does that help us destroy them?” he says, insistent. Knowing who’s after them does nothing if they have no way of fighting back. “They want to destroy us.”

“They want to destroy us because we have their secrets, Phil. They were following you and they fucked up my life, which means they’re everywhere. Whoever they are, whatever this is, this is _huge_. And secrecy is vital to their survival. You see?”

Phil pulls back an inch. “We can’t just expose them, Dan. They’ve made sure no one will believe us.”

“So we make sure it’s impossible not to believe us.”

“Dan,” he starts. And he can hear himself being careful, and he can hear himself being patronising, as if he’s mindful not to let Dan down, but Dan is so fervent and urgent in this moment, and he can’t bear it. As much as he wants it to be true - as much as he wants freedom from this - he’s relinquished that for this life of a ghost. They’re scared and lucky, not strong and smart. “You’re a computer geek, and I write and take photos for a living. There’s no way we can combat some national - _international_ \- force. There’s no way.”

“There is. I can find a way to put everything I’ve found in one place, all the details and the code and the VPNs, if I can.”

“You can do that?”

“I’m gonna have to.”

“But can you?”

“Yes. I think so. I...I have ideas.”

Phil hooks one of his arms over the elbow of the other; he can feel the tremble of his heart in his chest. Heat flares up in a panic, before quenching itself. He wills himself to _calm down_. “So what do I do?”

“You write up everything we know and see in an article. Take photos and put those in. Everything we know. That’s all we have.”

“Then what?”

“Put it all in one place, on a physical copy. We tell them we have information that could take their whole organisation down, and that if they don’t want us to use it, they have to leave us alone.”

Phil slumps back in his chair, looks scrupulously at Dan to detect any sign of doubt. In the walls, the water pipes start to bang and crash - a siren. “You’ve thought this through a lot, haven’t you?”

“Haven’t you?” Phil shakes his head. “I couldn’t help it.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I wasn’t _sure_ of anything. And anyway, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It was nicer to just...pretend.”

“I understand.”

Tapping the table with a finger, Dan says, “We need this insurance. We need this protection, so that when we come face to face, we know we have something to hold over them.”

“And what if it’s the police?”

“It should work both ways: we prove our innocence to the police, or we prove that we _can_ prove our innocence to the police.”

“And our innocence relies on exposing this group? This conspiracy?”

Again, “It’s all we have.”

“But is that enough?”

“We’ll make it enough,” Dan decides. His determination is a battleship, furiously righting itself over and over in stormy weather.

Phil sighs, drawing the sound out and out until there’s nothing left in his lungs. “Do we start...now?” The thought is difficult to say aloud, especially as his head is still fumbling through it all.

“I don’t think I could do anything else,” Dan answers. “Could you?”

He looks out of the window; there are still many hours left of the day, meandering in bright colours on the other side of the glass. “What do I say?”

It’s such a surreal circumstance. When he writes articles, he knows his audience - small, quite uncaring - and the details he needs to cover. But now he’s expected to recount a tale he refuses to mull over, to a group unnamed, in order to save his innocence and life. All he has are their attempts and failures, hope and anguish, determination and desperation. He has to tidy that up into a plead, a case. Somehow.

“It doesn’t have to be perfect first time.”

“I’ve written articles before, Dan. But what do I _say_? How do I say it?”

“Say everything that happened, to me and to you. Recount every piece of evidence we have. It doesn’t have to be an article, it can be anything.”

“I can use subtitles and lists?”

Dan smiles, gracious. Phil snatches the sight and removes it from context, allowing himself to pretend a joke has passed between them and everything is fine. Everything is fine.

It doesn’t stay long, slipping off his lips as the situation declares so. “If you want. Use shit from articles, too, to back us up. Address questions the police don’t know the answers to. We have what’s important on our side.”

“The truth?”

“Yeah. And they have their own version of it, the one they manufactured.”

Phil pulls a face. “Is that meant to help?”

“Ahh…” Dan waves a hand in the air, trailing off. He thinks, focused, for a second, before deciding he has something proper to say. “What it comes down to is who needs their truth more.”

 _They followed me_ , he thinks. _They ruined your life. They’re everywhere_. Fear swamps him. “They really need it.”

“And so do we.”

Phil nods, just for something to do with himself, for some way to show he’s taking in Dan’s words. (He is, and he isn’t getting anywhere with them, and they swirl around and around in the mud, and they stick and clunk and panic.) “I’m going to use so many subtitles they won’t know where to look first.”

Snorting, Dan says, “Are you? Glad to hear it.”

Quieter, he asks, “Will you be in your room?”

Dan nods. “You’re welcome to join me, but I won’t be the best company.”

“Maybe later.”

“Okay.” Dan nods again, smiling like this is a situation he needs to ameliorate, looking at him like he’s working hard to stay anchored in this spot. “Before you do anything, I think I should check all the stuff I set up for you is still working.”

The idea that the safeguarding he’s relied on is fallible is unsettling, at the least, but he knows better than to not consider checking it. “Of course.” After they sit there for a long moment, neither speaking, both looking to each other and away, he says, “Why does it feel like we’re saying goodbye?”

Rolling his eyes, Dan laughs and says, “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“It does,” he insists, “It feels like we’re saying goodbye.”

“How?” Dan throws a hand into the air and lets it fall back to his lap. “How does it feel like a goodbye?”

“The awkward silence,” he lists. “The fact we’re not going anywhere. The fact we’re both _terrified_.” He hates to admit it, but it’s like ignoring a third arm. “It makes it all feel like - like the moment we step out of here - it’s the end.”

“You make no sense,” Dan remarks, shaking his head and leaning inwards - which means he knows what he means. “I’m not planning on going anywhere. Are you?”

“Of course not.”

“Well, then.” Dan cracks a wide grin - if he’s not careful, he’ll smash it, such things don’t _belong,_  don’t _last_ in this kind of situation - and hits Phil’s knee. “I’ll be meeting with your laptop soon, I expect.”

Dan stands, and then Phil does; they leave the kitchen one after the other, so that it doesn’t matter who leaves first and who hesitates.

-

At first, the amount of information thrown at him is overwhelming; for an hour, at least, he watches video after video of interviews, reads pages and pages of articles, and ends up with a document filled with copied and pasted quotes, and notes he’s hastily jotted down without knowing what to keep and what to discard. The interviews lead him to Youtube, where he finds a collection of conspiracy videos regarding _The Credit Card Killer_ ; despite their adamancy that they have something new or enlightening to add to the story, Phil finds no one who manages to correctly interpret any of it. The police have revoked access of Dan’s social media to the public, and with the bare details everyone knows, there’s little evidence to suggest it is Dan, let alone that it isn’t. In the outside world, _The Credit Card Killer_ is only a horror trend, an enigmatic but minor mystery. Yet, here, in this house, it is all they can think about.

As he reflects back on his vast collection of notes, Phil tells himself not to worry, that he can take all the time he needs to sort through it all and create a final case. As soon as that conclusion is drawn, however, he realises they don’t know how much time they have left. They are working on snatched time as it is, blindly stumbling towards the denouement, and their enemies (is that the correct word to use? It sounds so childish) could be at their door tomorrow.

Urgency goes against everything he wants to have. This won’t take too long, but it won’t be done by tonight, he’s sure - he wants to ease into this new decision. It’s a risk, it’s always a risk, and the only way they can hope to have enough time is by avoiding a slip up of any sort. They have enough food downstairs to last them two weeks, he reckons, but there’s no way to _know_. Everything they do sends a ripple out, inexorably, until it comes to the attention of someone who cares.

Working meticulously through the document, Phil can sense a sort of bad feeling working to vex him, but it sits just beyond his consciousness. He can’t tell what it is, only that part of him knows this solution isn’t complete, isn’t _enough_ , no matter how certain Dan is that it will be. As if they’re missing something, something obvious and fatal…

He chalks it up to general anxiety. These feelings are forgivable, due to the circumstances. Shoving the thought away, Phil returns to his work.

Hidden behind a pillow of cloud, the sun continues to cast the earth in pure light; it arches through the sky on an undetectable path, and suddenly dusk flutters down, like a butterfly, to perch on the skyline. Phil takes a glance out the window in a moment of idleness and, seeing the darkness, shuts his computer. A dark but mellifluous music drifts across the landing from Dan’s room, growing in volume as he steps out and goes down the stairs. In the kitchen, he makes up a few sandwiches using items from the fridge, pours himself a glass of water - and decides it would be best to pour Dan one, too.

Dan pauses his music when Phil comes in, balancing a tray on his hands. His eyebrows are pinched together, and he’s disjointed as he smiles at him and says, “Thank you.”

“How are you getting on?” he asks, handing a glass and sandwich to Dan and sitting down on the bed.

“Alright,” he replies, and doesn’t sound too convinced. “I need to find a way to get more data out of it.”

“Are you doing stuff on all those forums you used, too?”

“I can do.”

“That would work,” he says, “Thanks.”

It’s the last time they talk about it today.

Squeezed up together on the bed, the tray balanced and wobbling on the last fraction of mattress, Dan brings up a Netflix film. In content silence, they watch it, commenting and laughing and reacting when they normally would; once it’s finished, they go their separate ways. Still, they don’t mention the following day’s tasks. It’s an earlier time to turn in than usual, but it seems agreed upon that it’s necessary.

-

In his sleep, his mind runs over and over the upcoming tasks and events, skidding over parts and stringing out others until they snap. The dream is convincingly real, as they always are, and everything is tangible: the laptops, the words on the screen, Dan’s supportive hand on his elbow, the chair, his fear.

He wakes and slips back into slumber numerous times, so every part is exhausted: the torturous trawling through web pages, the encrypting, the wait, all in a random order. One nightmare shows his face up beside Dan’s on the TV screen, others showing Dan going to the shops and never coming back. With each abhorrent ending, another starts as if the previous never happened. Time jerks forwards and all his emotions are both augmented and blurred, too fast to divine their exact forms.

Finally, his head takes him to the final part: the hand-over. It doesn’t show how they contact them; all at once there are people at the door, and Dan is prising the memory stick from Phil’s fingers to show to them. Phil can’t discern the words coming from him, nor the words on the paper he has clutched in his hands. The people form a crescent around their doorstep, dressed in clothes darker than the dead of night they’re standing in; mouths like puckered scars, skin wrinkled with shadow and what his mind decides are _real_ scars, lowered brows and towering spines. As for their main features, he can’t remember them - nor does he pay them much heed. Their expressions and the atmosphere they summon are more important. It feels like he’ll never remember anything else about them.

To his right, Dan is still talking, and he must be explaining exactly what will happen if they continue to harm them; he waves the memory stick in front of their faces, and gestures to the article in Phil’s hands.

Everything is tangible: the paper in his hands, his fear, his shock as one steps forward and grabs the USB from Dan’s grasp, the bone-like cracking as it is crushed under their heel, the cyclone of air gathered up by a bullet as it charges into Dan’s chest, the collapse of his knees and his heart.

-

Phil jolts awake. Lying motionless in bed, a gasp already rattles up his ribs and out his mouth. Sweat floods down his forehead and his back; his throat is dry, littered with detritus; his heart thuds and judders from the aftershocks.

The particulars are already fading: their faces, the lead up, the exact crumple of Dan’s body that his brain had decided upon. Normally, he would be glad for the gruesome and macabre to retreat as quickly as they are, but not this time. This time, these details are key to their success. This is a graphic message from his subconscious, so he needs to listen.

He scrabbles for the main issues, and finds his fear is needless: he won’t forget the pivotal events anytime soon. Of it all, his feelings are the most lucid; following those - or maybe intertwined with them, for they are unforgettably related - are the things he felt they were missing. Firstly, they have no way to contact the gang to make a deal. None they have agreed upon, at least. Secondly, they have no insurance. If they tell this group about the information they have, all they need do is kill them, find all their data, and destroy it. There’s no reason _not_ to. There’s no reason why they should trust them not to leak it anyway.

The nightmare is a poison remaining in his system. He finds himself starting to cry.

Dan isn’t dead, Phil isn’t about to be shot. But there’s no way to convince his body otherwise: his body trembles, his stomach whorls, the tears keep streaming like a lava flow.

It’s just past two in the morning. His curtains are still open. The night drips black ink down his window panes.

Phil forces himself out of bed. Discarding his sweat-soaked shirt, he pulls a jumper over his head and swipes the tears from his face. He stands still for a moment, and his focus succeeds in stilling the quiver of his upper lip. Once he is convinced he won’t cry again, he leaves his room.

It’s not the first time he’s come to Dan’s room with a problem, and he’s sure it won’t be the last. It is the first time, though, that Dan is asleep when he does so. He knocks, and gets no answer, so edges the door open - in case Dan hasn’t heard? Or because Phil fears the worse? He can’t tell.

Dan doesn’t react to Phil’s arrival. Phil can’t hear anything but the whir of Dan’s laptop from the desk, can’t see anything but the lump of a body under the sheets, unmoving, and then he _does_ fear the worst. The how or why doesn’t matter, only that it’s happened. A geyser of panic shoots up through him, and he stumbles forward -

\- only to see Dan isn’t dead and gone forever, but sleeping.

Phil breaths a sigh of relief, and retreats a few steps.

He hates to wake Dan up. He hates to add to the stress Dan is undeniably under. (The laptop whirs louder for a second.) But this is serious, urgent in a way he dreads. He won’t be able to sleep until it’s addressed; won’t be convinced they can survive this until he solves it. Dan’s buckled body, scrunched like paper, red bleeding out of one corner, remains impressioned on his mind.

“Dan,” he whispers, shaking his shoulder gently. He already hates this whole thing, wishes he could crawl into bed beside Dan and fall asleep and bid goodnight to their conundrum.

“Hm?” Dan mutters, a low rumble in the room. His eyelids slide open slowly, and for a few seconds his eyes are only crescents.

“I’m sorry to wake you,” he says first, chewing the inside of his cheek. He’s still whispering, and he’s still surprised Dan is here, awake and alive.

“What’s the matter?” Pushing a hand into his face, Dan opens his eyes fully and pushes himself up so he’s supported by his elbows.

“I just -”

“Phil.” Dan cuts off what was to become a ramble.

He sighs. He glances to the corner of the room, where the laptop is, and slumps down onto the edge of the bed. “What’s stopping them just shooting us, stealing our data, and destroying it?”

“What do you mean?” Dan asks, even as his face starts to fall.

“We have no insurance, no _reason_ for them to keep us alive. If we threaten them, they’ll just get rid of us because there’s no reason not to. If we die, the information’s pointless. We haven’t got enough to bring them down, oh God.”

“Phil -”

“Also,” he charges on, “why should they believe us? If we tell them that if they leave us alone, we won’t do anything against them, how do they _know_ that? We haven’t thought this through -”

“ _Phil_.” Dan reaches out in the darkness and catches hold of his wrist. “You’re right, but we can’t panic.”

Phil nods. He pushes several breaths out through his teeth until he’s calm again. “Okay.”

“You’re right,” Dan says again, retracting his hand. He sounds glum, disheartened, but not like he’s given up yet. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“I knew something wasn’t right,” he agrees, “but I didn’t know what.”

“And now we do.”

“And now we do.”

“We have to make it,” he says, focusing on fact and not the thought of Dan’s dead body (crumpled, bleeding, collapsed), “so that we _have_ to be alive and well, or they’ll be exposed.”

“But how does that work? If we’re dead, then we can do fuck-all to them. They have every reason to kill us.”

“I know. I know.” He cards a hand through his hair. “We have to find a way around that.”

“I don’t know how to do that. I don’t know.” Dan punches the mattress - Phil flinches. “Sorry, but it’s a fucking paradox.”

“We need someone or something to be able to do it if we’re...gone.”

“But how the fuck do we do that? We have no one. We have no _thing_.”

Slowly, he sorts through it in his head. “How were you going to do it?”

“What?”

“The leak. What were you going to use to expose them, if it came to it?”

“Oh.” Dan blinks. “Well, I was going to contact newspapers and things. Share it online. I’m a public figure now, in a weird way, so I figured any statement I made would have great impact.”

“Right.” Phil nods. His words are struggling to come out quickly, struggling through the mass of thoughts clotting his head like molasses. “Newspapers. Online?”

“Of course. Why? What are you thinking?”

“I’m not sure yet.”

“Okay.”

They sit in silence. Phil can feel Dan’s eyes on him. He sits, with the push of his heaving chest, tapping his fingers on his thighs.

They need a way to contact the papers even if they’re dead - or, in fact, to only contact them if they _are_ dead. A way to ensure that if they aren’t there to stop it, the newspapers will get hold of their article. Their proof needs to exist in a separate sphere - to exist _beyond_ them and their circle, in a variety of places. But abundance isn’t the whole solution: those different copies need a way to be unleashed on the public. It isn’t enough for them to just lie there, unconnected…

He has nothing. Then, in a sudden burst of revelation like a volt of electricity, he has something. “Is there a way for you to hack into major news sites?”

As if charged by his energy, Dan sits up straighter. “Why? To make sure it gets online? How does that help us?”

Phil shakes his head. “This is just the beginning, bear with me. Is there a way?”

“As if you even have to _ask_.” Dan’s joke marks a sudden change in mood, the residue of the hope they’re not justified to feel just yet.

“Can we make it so that everything gets uploaded unless we stop it? Can we do that?”

“You mean, like, some sort of delayed release system?”

“Yes, with a sort of reverse red button, where if we press it, the explosion _stops_ instead of goes. Does that make sense?”

After a pause, Dan says, “I think so. You mean, like, a code?”

“Yes, that!” Relief coasts through him, and he grins. “One we have to put in regularly - every day, for example - and if we’re not there to do it, the data goes out on every webpage.”

“That’s...a very logical idea. You’re a genius. It should work, shouldn’t it?”

Phil nods, earnest. “If we tell them that everything will go live unless we can keep stopping it, they’ll have to let us go.”

“I can program some sort of routine check, some code I have to put in to cancel it. But can’t they just torture it out of us? Or hack it, or destroy it?”

Phil understands what Dan was feeling, now, this delirium of hope up against a loss of it, this burst of growth scavenged from a grain of inspiration. “We create a copy. On a memory stick, or something, fuck, I don’t know. But we make a copy, a physical copy, and hide it in a safety box or something. If they destroy our data, we can use that.”

“And if they kill us?”

The prospect is sickening but real, so he meets it with unwavering bravery. “We find a way to tell someone we know what to do if that ever happens. Our wills, or something, I don’t know. It doesn’t have to all be sorted out. They just need to believe we know what we’re doing.”

“If we do that, we can’t leave a single trace of what we did. They can’t be allowed to find it for themselves,” Dan cautions.

“I know.”

“Okay.”

He says, “I’m trying.” The euphoria has faded into background noise. The prospect of them being shot isn’t so potent, but it’s still a possibility, and until they execute this plan and it works, it always will be. There’s no overcoming that for long.

“So am I.”

He looks at Dan, and Dan looks back. Dan nods. He nods back. Two people: lost and maybe never found, but gallant in the face of death. For once, the puppet strings of their endings seem to be within their grasp.

“I dreamt,” he says, “that you were shot.”

“Were you disappointed when you came in here and saw that I was still alive?” The blue light of Dan’s digital clock caves around them, so he can just see Dan in the gloom: his joking smile is there, but soft, and it’s clear he seeks to comfort not to rile.

Phil rolls his eyes, but allows Dan’s comment a shaking laugh. “Another time, you went missing.” He screws his eyes shut for a heartbeat. “You went out to buy something, I don’t know, and you never came back.”

“It’s okay. I’m okay.”

“But it could become real.”

“And the good news is it wasn’t,” Dan replies. “This was how you worked out the flaws in our plan, right?”

Phil nods, a stutter of movement. Dan reaches out and gives his hand a squeeze. The swift switch of roles is surprising; how quick they both are to quell the other’s doubts, even when they had their own seconds before. “What about the other issue? How do we make sure they trust us not to expose them anyway?”

“They’ll know where we are at all times. It’s obvious they can still kill us if we do anything. They’re just gonna have to trust us: if they don’t, it’s game over for them. This will work. We make it so they don’t have a choice. Okay?”

“Yeah.” Next, he asks, “Are we sure ‘not dying’ comes into this?”

Dan squeezes his hand again, offering him a pitying but emphatic look. “We need a stalemate,” Dan replies. “That’s all. No more than that.”

The conclusion is as freeing as it is small: they don’t need to win. They just need to not lose. “That’s all,” he echoes. “But what if -”

“Stop,” Dan mutters, “and go to bed.”

“I - fine.” Phil pushes his palms into the mattress and stands. The movement brings him back to himself, and as he searches for energy, he discovers nothing but fatigue: the conversation has taken it all from him. He sways on the spot. “It’s so much effort,” he complains, and falls back down.

(He’s lying. It’s not that he can’t pick himself up and leave. It’s that he’s too terrified to.)

“Oh my God,” Dan states, but makes it clear he isn’t annoyed. Instead, he shuffles to the other side of the bed, grabs two spare pillows, and chucks them at Phil. “There’s a pile of sheets in the cupboard.”

“I can sleep on the floor?” He doesn’t know if he should feel touched, or surprised. (Both. He feels both.)

“Didn’t have much choice, did I?” Again, it’s not harsh. Dan tinkers with the words, so they sound solemn in defeat. It’s not a cutting retort, but a silent nod to their shared terror.

The thought teeters on the edge of his brain before falling, tumbling down the tiers of his chest. It softens everything it passes, until Phil feels himself slipping away. He barely manages to find a blanket and make his bed before he’s out of it.

-

Life restarts the next morning. Phil toasts bread for breakfast, Dan has the crusts, Phil sneaks a handful of cereal, and then they depart to their individual rooms and individual tasks. The perpetual chore of composing his article isn’t so perpetual after all: he finishes it in a few hours, scarily, takes another one to edit it, and a final one to upload photos of all the evidence he’s assembled. It’s way past lunchtime by this point, so he produces a makeshift sandwich using the odd ingredient he finds in the kitchen, tops up his water glass, and eats his food while searching for any articles or facts he might have missed. He knows he must make it as compelling and damning as possible, and that seems to lack an upper limit; he finds forum after forum of conspiracies that could concern the people they’re up against, using the links Dan sends him and others; it feels necessary to discuss every theory that’s crossed his mind, if it means he can’t be proved wrong. _How exactly_ , he wonders, typing in another term into the search bar, _do I unmask someone I don’t know?_

Dan gave him a memory stick to upload the article on, because _it’s important we avoid leaving an online footprint_ , he said.

(“Is it a footprint,” Phil said, “or more like a snail trail?” Dan refused to answer.)

He sets the information to upload, and settles down to watch a show on Netflix. After an hour’s break, he heads back downstairs and selects a ready meal for two from the fridge. Laying it on the table, he walks to the door and calls out, “Dan! Dinner!”

There’s no reply.

He walks to the base of the staircase. “Dan!” he calls again. No reply.

Dan’s bedroom is only a short distance away, and Phil’s hungry, so he pulls himself up the stairs. But Dan’s room is empty. His laptop isn’t there, and his bed is made. Phil undergoes a brief moment of panic, before he gets a grip and tells himself to be logical. The bathroom is empty, and so is Phil’s bedroom; he hurries back down the stairs and into the front room. To his relief, Dan sits in one of the armchairs, back to the door, computer on his lap. As Phil steps in, he sees several lit matches scattered around the fire, but none of the logs are more than scorched.

“Dan,” he announces his presence, but Dan doesn’t register, “I called you for dinner, but you didn’t reply. What are you doing?” He approaches and reads his screen over his shoulder: the article’s titled _Credit Card Killer Victim Laid to Rest at Public Funeral_. At the top of the screen, he can see three or four tabs open for similar news articles. “What are you doing?” he says again. “This was my job.” His caution is acute; he can hardly imagine what would cause Dan to put himself through this.

“Just...looking.”

The sound is a puncture in his gut: Dan’s voice is alien and fragile, squashed between two rollers and left to soak in water. He falls to his knees beside him, and knows what he will see before he looks at him: Dan is crying. Phil should have seen it from the shake of his shoulders, should have known it from his persistent silence and the stories he was making himself read. “Shit shit shit, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. What’s wrong? What’s wrong?”

Dan is just letting the tears fall down his face. They hang over his lip and from his jaw, and he makes no move to shake them. His facade is marble. He pulls his mouth into a fine line and shakes his head. “I’m just looking.”

“Dan,” he says. Not stern, and not pitying, but a fine, soothing line between the two. “What’s wrong?”

“He’s _dead_ , Phil.” The paroxysm cracks the marble. Phil tries to hold himself together as Dan crumbles in front of him: mouth bowing into a frown, brow following suit, a hand coming up to cradle one side of his face. Eyes watering, the weeping dimples his face in the most awful way. “He’s really dead. He’s dead, he’s dead, he’s dead.” His voice tethers off into nothing - a pulse weakening and flatlining.

“It’s not your fault,” he soothes, prising the machine from Dan’s loose grip, shutting the lid, and putting it to one side.

“I know it’s their fault.” Phil shuffles forward and opens out his arms. A sob escapes from the back of Dan’s throat, and he falls forward into his hold. “But I miss him.”

Part of him is relieved Dan is no longer blaming himself for Toby’s death - at least, he’s acknowledging it isn’t his fault. But the loss still remains, as it is bound to do, and it isn’t possible to feel satisfied with such a magnitude of grief vibrating the air around him. He can feel the aftereffects in his own chest, and it only increases as he holds Dan: with Dan’s heart as the epicentre, the tremors have more power this close.

“I’m sorry.”

“I miss him so much,” he yearns, aches, cries. No number of words could describe it, he thinks.

As he tumbles into another ruin of tears and sobs and gulping breaths, Phil shushes him with the barest of whispers, running a hand up and down his spine, staring at the laptop sitting on the ground a few centimetres away from them. “It’s okay, it’s okay.”

The movement of Dan shaking his head jabs into his shoulder. “You know that we’ll never be okay again.”

Phil does know, so he doesn’t try to challenge or even alleviate the statement. He lowers his chin so his face is buried in Dan’s shoulder; he blinks and the tears are there, as if they always have been. He takes deep, long breaths as he waits for them to leave.

During his time here, the world has oscillated between feeling too large and too small. Now, though, it feels like both: the world consists of just the pair of them and the loss twined between them, but it is also the silence of the house, and the stretched miles of the hinterlands, and the rumbling songs of the cities, and the wandering presence of the gang somewhere in the midst of it. They occupy a retired corner - silent, understanding - but that corner sits in the centre of a world still churning. In this stillness, he’s attuned to every flutter and stutter of the world outside. The feeling is comforting, almost: knowing time has paused, but that it still continues somewhere. They are in their own stygian space - a cathedral, with grief piled up to the rafters - but the rest of the world is healthy and bright-eyed. The rest of the world will still be there when they’re ready to return.

“I’m so angry.”

The position is straining at his shoulder bones, and his knees ache, but Phil keeps holding on. When Dan speaks, he doesn’t say anything, just waits for him to continue once he’s ready.

“I just. Have the urge to _hurt_ them, I want to hurt them _so badly_ and I -” He breaks off, punches the arm of the chair, and then pulls his fingers into a tight fist. Shutting his eyes, he breaths in. Breaths out. Phil searches for the fisted hand, finds it - it’s deathly cold - and rests his own on top, _you can keep going_ . “They fucked my life over. They fucked _our_ lives over. And I can’t do the same because they have me trapped. There’s no fucking _way_ I can retaliate, they’re too powerful and I don’t even know who the fuck they are! I’m fucking useless and it’s because of them, and I can’t even make them pay for his death.”

“Have you got the data together?” he asks, after a blast of silence.

“Yes. Everything I could _get_ , anyway,” he spits.

“And I’ve finished my article,” Phil says. “This is how we hurt them. They’ve got us in check, and they know it. They think it’s checkmate. They need it to be checkmate. And we’re going to make it a stalemate.”

“Only because we can’t do more than that.”

“If we did, I think we’d be dead,” Phil reasons. “Stalemate is better than checkmate. This is the most damage we can do to them without dying.”

“How?” Dan questions, choked by his anguish. “How does this do anything to them?”

“‘Cause they think they’ve won,” he replies. “But we’re gonna make it so they can’t do anything more to us. And that is really going to piss them off.”

A hand on each of Dan’s arms, Phil pulls away. He smiles up at him, blinking his vision clear. He catches his eye, and a smile edges across Dan’s face, bit by bit. It’s cut from a blunt knife, messy and unsure, but it’s better than nothing.

(They don’t need to win. They just have to prove they can fight. They have to avenge their losses. They have to prove they can hurt them back. It’s the only way they can feel fulfilled, gratified. That’s how they come out of this without losing.)

“Thank you,” Dan says, steeped in sincerity, after a few moments.

He refuses to accept it. For starters, it hardly feels like he can comfort successfully when he’s crying, too. “I’m sorry I can’t bring Toby back.” He can feel the threat of tears again, and he blinks fiercely.

“You still made me feel better,” Dan says, voice cracking. He clears his throat - a sound like gathering the fragments together. “You still made me happier.”

“I’m just guessing, same as you.”

“You’re good at guessing, though. And making it sound convincing,” he insists. “You made it better.”

“But I still have no idea what we’re doing. We could end up anywhere.” Phil’s face falls into another damp smile. “It’s the blind leading the blind.”

With a laugh that dissolves into a sob, Dan hugs him again. “I don’t care where we end up, ‘s long as we go together.”

Phil closes his eyes and breaths in, shaky but evening out. “We will,” he says. “We will.”

 _This is a stand in for the funeral he never got,_ Phil thinks as they hold onto each other. The loss is a tender bruise pulled like a net over his whole body, and he tentatively reaches out to touch it; it evades his touch, barely, flinching and wincing before surrendering. Their remorse is a church with a yawning, cavernous roof. Their shallow breaths echo endlessly in the space above their heads. The stain glass windows weep. The doors are sealed shut. In the chest of the building, it’s whispering and respectful and funereal.

“It’s good you agree,” Dan speaks up after a while, “or it would be fucking awkward.”

Phil laughs, and it resounds through his rib cage. “C’mon, I have dinner waiting.” He pulls back, swaying on his heels; he takes the arm Dan offers and heaves himself up, then helps Dan do the same.

“Is it another ready meal?”

“It’s spaghetti, thanks very much,” he chides. “What do you take me for?”

“So it is a ready meal.” Dan cocks an eyebrow.

“...Yes.”

“Asda?”

“Sainsbury’s,” he says. “Actually.”

“Ha,” Dan laughs. “Oh, wow, we’re going up in the world.”

He nods. “I think we deserve a little luxury.”

As he makes his way through to the kitchen, Dan laughs again, and it sounds genuine, even if it’s still finding its footing.

The church feels a little less empty.

-

“I’m gonna hook the burglar alarm up to our phones,” Dan announces midway through dinner, wiping at the corner of his mouth and replacing his cutlery on either side of his plate. Phil does the same, stilling, listening. “That way, we’ll know if someone’s come in wherever we are. I don’t want something like yesterday happening again.” He is composed and determined as he speaks, a whisper of the rage he displayed earlier. Phil nods in agreement and support.

“Even if they reset it?”

“Yes. If anyone does anything to it, we’ll know.”

“You can do that?” Phil checks, eyebrows hiking up towards his hairline.

“If I couldn’t,” Dan says, with a canny smile, “d’you think I’d suggest it?”

“Sorry,” he says. He pushes his cutlery together on his plate. “It just sounds... _difficult_.”

“It is.”

“How can you do it?”

“My teenage years were quite boring,” Dan explains.

“So you turned to cyber crime instead,” he interprets, failing to hide his interest.

“It’s a good job I did, isn’t it?” Dan challenges. “And anyway, it wasn’t _crime_.”

“As long as it keeps us safe,” Phil declares, picking his fork back up, “I don’t care.”

-

After that, it’s a case of tying up the loose ends.

Sat in the TV room, Dan spends two hours fiddling with the burglar alarm and his phone, then with the burglar alarm and Phil’s phone. The triumphant yell he lets out at the end implies he’s successful with it.

Phil pauses the video he’s watching and takes out an earbud. “Done?” he asks, with a grin.

“Fuck yeah I am,” he replies, breath shallow, chest rising and falling noticeably.

Next, Phil hands his memory stick over to Dan, who begins the task of compressing everything and linking it to the main news sites. Phil doesn’t understand the exact details of it, and he knows it won’t do them any good to try and do so; hence, he returns to his TV show. At ten o’clock, Dan is showing no signs of finishing or moving, so Phil packs up his things, bids him goodnight, and heads upstairs. Once he’s washed, changed, and ready to sleep, he picks his book up off the bedside table, slips back stairs, and settles down to read on the other chair.

Dan finishes in the early hours of the morning. At the sound of him sighing and shutting his laptop, Phil blinks hard and rubs at his eyes, the hand holding his book falling down towards the carpet. Half bemused, Dan looks at him, then to the blank windows. “What’s the time?”

“Just gone one, I think.” He squints at the clock on the mantelpiece.

“Why are you still awake?”

“Out of solidarity,” Phil explains. “It’s hardly fair you have to work the late shifts and I don’t, is it?”

“What, are we some kind of trade union now?”

Phil pulls a face before softening. Running one finger along the fabric, he says, “I didn’t want you to feel alone.”

Dan lowers his head. “I told you,” he murmurs, “you’re doing a fine job of that already.”

“And anyway,” Phil continues, overly cheerily as he sits up, “I can’t have you going to bed after your bedtime, can I?”

“For fuck’s sake,” Dan states, but accepts the hand Phil offers to help him stand up.

-

They find the location for their safety deposit box the next day. It takes a very short time for Dan to put everything, all their work, onto the initial memory stick. They’ve decided that making any changes to their wills would be too high-profile - the longer they’re in hiding, the more likely they are to be found - so the deposit box is the only other measure they’ve taken. They’ll add its location and any other information to the documents once the whole thing’s finished; they decide that they’ll just have to lie about it and hope the threats they do have are enough. After all, they reason, having someone to use the memory stick for them is hardly the difference between success and failure.

Once it’s uploaded, he takes it out of his computer and hands it to Phil.

“This is it,” he says. “After this, we’re out of moves.”

Phil takes it and toys it between his fingers; he nods, slipping it into his pocket. “I knew I could rely on you,” he says.

“To do what?” Dan asks, skeptical.

“To lighten the mood when things got too dark,” he says, and laughs as Dan flips him off.

-

They check their bespoke security system works before Phil sets off for the safety deposit box - the one they’ve found is approximately an hour’s journey south. His roots are covered with a beanie, the unkempt ends of his hair crawling down over his ears; his skin is slick with makeup.

“My jaw looks twice as wide,” he decides, studying himself in the rear view mirror.

“Never mind that,” Dan replies. “Please be careful.”

“I will.”

“I need the car in one piece,” he says, “at least. I need it to get home.”

“I promise I won’t drive over the speed limit once.” Putting a fingertip to his cheek, he tilts his face to the left and widens his eyes at how different he looks. “You’ve done a great job with this, bloody hell.”

“You’re not allowed to die now,” Dan says, eyes trained on him, in case he didn’t get the message the first time.

“Same to you,” Phil returns, because he did understand, from the moment Dan opened his mouth. He musters a consoling smile, says, “It’ll work,” and pulls the door shut.

-

Driving through the countryside, he’s reminded of his journey up to Wycoller. So much has changed since then, yet much is still the same. The seclusion remains: Dan is still on the run, Phil is still concealing the links he has with him, the world still thinks Dan’s criminal. They still inhabit the ghostly underworld of modern life, hiding in a comatose village, knowing that any movement too violent, any chain rattled, will reveal them.

But the clerk doesn’t look twice as she hands the key over to Phil, just tells him to _come this way_ and to _ask if you need anything, okay?_ Since Toby’s funeral yesterday, the media has had nothing else to say on the matter, instead moving on to other, more recent stories; the world has moved on. It’s only them that are trapped in this tale.

Phil can’t help but wonder, as he leaves the store, what it would be like if the police had released his name, too. It would have been far scarier, far more difficult to do all this. Knowing that, it’s even harder to guess why they never incriminated him, too.

-

Dan rushes to meet him at the front door - he must have been waiting in the front room.

“Okay?” he asks.

Phil nods. Dan breaths a loud sigh of relief. Phil asks, “What do we do now?”

Looking outside as he shuts the door, Dan says, “We wait for them to reveal themselves.”

-

  
Life returns to how it was before. They watch TV and read books and play board games into the depths of evening; they ration out the food in the larder and argue over chores and never speak, once, about the memory stick waiting in a small metal box one hour south.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> they decide this needs to end.

It was never going to be something they could predict, only anticipate. Like thunderclouds hanging on the horizon, apprehension sparking in the air with every passing minute; they knew it was coming, but it was a case of waiting, waiting, waiting. With every day of silence, the feeling grew - it was a question of when. Eventually, something had to give, had to _happen_ , but there was no way of telling how close it was. On this side of the chase, they’re hiding in darkness.

Even so, when it does happen - when the something gives and the crack of light splinters the silence - Phil can’t help but think he’s underprepared. It catches him by surprise, but all the plans they’ve put in place had almost lured him to think he wouldn’t be.

They’re approaching the crux of summer. The sun throbs in the sky; the grass is on the edge of turning a sickly brown. Phil swelters in his room, the window open to catch any breath of breeze or wild flower’s scent. He’s on the last book of the trilogy, and it’s managing to distract him from the extreme heat.

“Phil!” Dan’s voice clatters up the stairs to him, heightened with frenzy. He calls again, the words stumbling over each other in their haste, “Holy fuck, Phil, get down here!”

Frowning, Phil glances at the clock. It’s nowhere near dinnertime, and they had lunch an hour ago. What could he be shouting to him for?

“Coming!” he replies. He puts his book to one side and tramples down the stairs. “Where are you?”

“In here!”

“Right, that’s helpful,” he remarks, following Dan’s voice into the front room. “What are you doing?”

Dan is stood up between the chairs, laptop held between his two hands. When he sees Phil, he leaps forward, tilting the screen towards him. His eyes are bright, fuelled by some excitement, the cause of which must be whatever is on the laptop. “Look at this.”

All Phil can see is a screen full of numbers, a group of them highlighted by Dan’s cursor. He blinks, shakes his head, expels a breath. “I don’t understand.” (He doesn’t understand, but his heart has started thumping in his chest and his ears.)

“How about this?” Pulling the computer back to himself for a moment, Dan presses a few keys before shoving it back into Phil’s line of sight.

The page shows a map. The highlighted numbers are keyed into the search bar. A location is marked with a red circle.

“Is that…? That’s a…” He peers closer. He teeters on the edge of a turning point. A gust of breath escapes him. “ _What?”_

“It’s a location,” Dan confirms. “About an hour and a half away from here.”

Phil falls off the edge, blood rushing through his head as he plummets. “You mean…? From someone…?”

“Someone’s used it,” Dan says, the exhilaration pouring from the corners of his mouth. “And their security’s failed.”

“How? How could that happen?” He has to be skeptical. A slip up like that surely couldn’t happen. They don’t just _happen_.

“Does that matter?” Dan brings the laptop back to his chest. “Phil, this is the break we’ve been waiting for. Doesn’t matter how it happened, just that we needed this really fucking bad. And now we’ve got it. You know that our plan could only work if we could speak to them?”

Phil nods, slow.

“This is the start. We can go and find out what people saw. This could be all it takes to find them. We can hunt them down. We have the one up on them.”

“And then we can tell them what we’ll do if they…If they threaten us.”

Dan nods, spurring him on, grinning. “ _Exactly_.”

Phil lets out another exhale in disbelief, shaking his head as he looks back to the map. Relief and euphoria burst out of his chest. “This could be how we find them.”

“This is how we win.”

“Only an hour and a half away…”

“Practically on our doorstep.” They’re not finishing each other’s sentences, exactly. It’s more a mismatched jigsaw, where the overall picture is frenzied hope.

“But,” he trails off, staring at the laptop and trying to make sense of it all. “Are you _sure?_ ”

“What else could it be?”

“I don’t know!” He throws his hands out. “But they don’t just make mistakes, do they? Do they?” His mind is a messy conflict between his hope and his doubt: he wants it to be true, so badly it aches, and already his body is relaxing into the solution. But he also frets it can’t be this simple, can’t be so reliant on chance.

“Don’t see it as a mistake,” Dan suggests, “but a technological failure. Those happen, regardless of skill, right?”

“I _suppose_. But, God, I don’t know. This is all just too...lucky.”

“Lucky? We’ve waited weeks for this. It’s hardly good timing, or any timing at all.”

“Maybe, but, just…” Phil stops, searching for words. The change is looming over them, swamping them, and it’s almost like they’ve gone from one darkness to another: the truth behind this is concealed. He knows Dan must feel it too, this doubt, these qualms. He knows he must also understand what this war between hope and reluctance feels like. “Our whole plan relies on this one mishap. It’s convenient, you must admit.”

“Our plan _always_ relied on this mishap,” Dan points out. “It always relied on them coming to us - whether by accident or on purpose - and we both knew it wasn’t the most reliable or solid of plans. But it’s the only way we get out of this.” He brings the laptop back up, showing a location and delineated route on Google Maps. “This is _it_ , Phil. They’ve come to us. This is our way out of this.”

“I know.” He sighs. His hand goes to his neck, and he pulls his palm away to find it slick with sweat. “I know. But promise you’ll check this is legit?”

“I will, I promise.” He slams the laptop shut. “While we’re in the car.”

“The _car_?” Phil almost squeaks in surprise.

“We have to get there straight away,” he presses. “I’ll do what I can on the way but if we don’t follow this now, it’s over again and we’re back to waiting.”

“We’ve been fine with waiting so far. Perhaps we should wait - for something more certain.”

“I would. But, Phil, as much as I appreciate having you here, I just want to get out. And I know you do too.”

Dan catches his eye and holds it, trying to lure an agreement from him. It works: steeling himself, Phil looks up and nods. “Okay. I - okay.”

Dan shoots him a grateful look. “Thank you.”

“You’re sure this is safe?”

“I’m sure this is something we need to look into. If it’s nothing, we come back and pretend it never happened. We’ve got the security system hooked up, so if something happens, we’ll know.”

It’s hardly comforting, knowing they could be miles away when the burglar alarm goes off. “And what about if it _is_ something? What do we do - what do we say?”

“This is from ten minutes ago. They won’t still be there when we arrive - we’re just having a look around - we’re trying to find a trail. We find what we need to find - somehow - I don’t know - and we’ll come back here. And we can decide what we do next. If - when we find where it leads.”

Biting his lip, Phil says, “We don’t have much of a choice, do we?”

“No,” Dan disagrees. “We didn’t have a choice. Now we do.” He says it to mark the end of the conversation. He places his laptop under his arm and walks out of the door.

“But is it the right one?” Phil calls after him.

He stops. Turns his head. He’s an alloy of fury and misery, just for a flash, and Phil desperately wants to forget the sight. “Do you think those really exist anymore?”

-

The car journey is the worst species of silence there could be. Hunkered on top of them, it’s a beast of painful size, with a thundering heartbeat and tight claws. Dan types furiously away at his laptop; Phil drums on the steering wheel and grinds his teeth. He craves to check his phone - over and over and over - but he can’t. For every minute passed, every cubic metre of familiar land left behind, the anticipation grows and the comfort withers. Still uncertain, he flits between dread ( _this is wrong_ ) and faith ( _this it it_ ) - but both poison his stomach, so he prefers neither.

It’s been weeks since he first came to Wycoller. He’s stayed hidden for weeks, cohabitating with paranoia and whispers. For so long, they’ve been on the losing side, on the weaker side, and he’s adjusted to it. Now the roles seem to be flipped, he can’t orientate himself. His head keeps spinning, and his blood is spinning, and his instincts are spilling - spilling like an oil spill. He feels on edge, like he could burst into flames any second.

Five minutes pass. Ten, fifteen. Phil’s bag rattles in the back, containing Phil’s camera and his wallet of evidence. Dan’s frown droops lower and lower over his forehead. Phil’s heartbeat screeches louder and louder in his head. The concern catches in the back of his throat, knotting it several times over: a web of acid and saliva he can’t eliminate. When they set off (Dan earnest, Phil wanting to return his smile but not quite finding it in himself to do so), they could see rain blurring the horizon. At the twenty minute mark, the storm hits; slugs of water hammering on the roof and the window, bruises of grey spreading across the zenith.

It’s not that he doesn’t want to get out. He does. But habits die hard, and this way of life is _his_ life, now. It’s familiar, and sometimes, even, it feels safe. If Dan wants them to pursue this, then he will, but he would also be happy to stay in hiding forever, rather than confront the beast. He never expected to become connected to such a dangerous scheme.

He never expected to befriend Dan, either. They’ve known each other a few weeks, yet they’re much closer than that. They don’t even know each other properly - to this day, Phil honours that - but they trust each other, almost indefinitely. That’s the result of their circumstances, he supposes. When you only have each other to talk to, when you only have the other to know who you are, when you share such a severe fear, it is perhaps guaranteed that you will connect quicker than you normally would. He still can’t quite understand it, like his body isn’t suited to gain a new addition in such a short time. Like a bump of new skin over a wound that never received the full time to heal.

“Anything?” he asks, turning down another country lane. His eyes flick to Dan and back. What Dan’s actually doing, he’s not entirely sure: if he’s trying to find a more recent location, or if he’s somehow checking the location they do have, he doesn’t know.

“Not really,” Dan replies, through gritted teeth, the path of his eyes lurching from place to place. A shadow passes over his face.

“What? What is it?” he asks, panic dropping from his head to his feet.

“Probably nothing.”

“For fuck’s sake, Dan, speak to me!”

Dan taps a few keys, frowning in concentration. He swallows. “Something’s wrong.”

“What? What do you mean?”

“Something’s not _right_ , Christ, do you ever ask anything else?” Dan snaps.

Phil’s breaths queue up in his throat, barbed and hurried. “How is something wrong? What do you see?”

“This location...I can’t find...I’m simplifying here, but I can’t find an origin for it.”

“Can you simplify that more?”

“There’s no place it comes from,” he explains, jabbing at a key. “There’s an action - a withdrawal, I think - but when I look deeper into the system it doesn’t come up anywhere. The actual bank account doesn’t show any changes. I’m sure it’s nothing - I’m just not familiar with the system.” That’s a lie. “But, I don’t know. Looking at it - I mean. It’s almost like…”

“Like what?” Phil presses.

“Like it’s been copied and pasted.”

“Oh,” he says. The pessimism wins as the hope atrophies into bitterness. “You mean, someone - someone put it there?”

“What else could it be?” Dan fires back.

“A glitch?”

“A glitch!” He shakes his head. “This is no glitch.”

“But it’s not a legitimate lead, either,” he bites back, the fear coming out as anger unguarded. “It’s nothing, after all.”

Dan glares at him. “You say that like it’s my fault.”

“Well,” he begins, “you were the one who wanted us to follow this straight away.”

“What did you want me to do?” Dan shoots back. “Find it and then have a nap?”

“I wanted you to make sure we didn’t just make rash decisions!”

“We couldn’t wait any longer!” Dan’s voice mounts in volume to match Phil’s. “You _know_ we had to act quickly.”

“But I _told_ you it wasn’t safe.” Phil’s hand comes slamming down on the steering wheel.

“It’s never been safe,” Dan yells. “Don’t tell me you’re naive as well as petty.”

“I know _that_. Stop being an arse,” he growls. “It was never safe, but now we’ve put ourselves in even more danger, for nothing.”

“We knew this was a possibility! I said it could be nothing, and we both agreed to do it anyway!”

“So it’s both of our faults?” Phil challenges, and scoffs.

“Of course it fucking is. This was a joint decision -”

Phil shakes his head - heart pounding like a knell in his chest, blood roaring in his ears - and pulls the car over into a layby. “You didn’t give me a _choice_.”

“Yes, I did, and you _know_ this was the right one to make - if it had been real - so stop trying to put all the blame on _me_. Just because you have nothing to lose, just because you think you’re better than me -”

“That’s not _true_ -”

“Because I’m the criminal and I’m the fuck up and you can go back home whenever you fancy. I’m sorry this turned out to be a complete waste of time. I’m sorry I didn’t think out every single fucking eventuality and mock up a battle plan for every single one. Sorry I’m trying to fix this shit and get us out, sorry my friends are _dead_ because of these people and my life is _ruined_ because of them and I’m trying to cope with that by justifying it with some pitiful revenge, sorry this all means nothing unless we succeed because otherwise we’re gonna end up dead in a ditch -”

“Stop it!” he cries out. Careening forwards - his forehead resting on the wheel, he says again, “Stop it, stop it, stop it. Shut up, quick, before we both say something awful.”

Dan shuts up.

They sit in silence again, chests heaving, not looking at each other. Phil squeezes the last drops of fury out of him, eyes screwed tightly shut. Half composed, he says, “What are we doing? We’re arguing and wasting time instead of trying to figure this out. Why?”

Neither of them offer an explanation. Instead, after another moment, Dan says, “I didn’t mean it, I’m sorry. You don’t think you’re better than me. You can’t go back home whenever you fancy. I was wrong, and I’m sorry.”

“You weren’t wrong about everything,” he disagrees. He swipes at his eyes angrily, and doesn’t say any more.

“No, I suppose not,” Dan says, uncomfortable. _Dead in a ditch_ is the most pungent of the words that remain in their heads, hooked in the air like dried meat.

“I shouldn’t have been so harsh on you,” he says, sitting back up. “I’m really sorry.”

Dan nods, and that marks the end of the argument.

They restart. “So,” Phil begins, “someone put that location there?”

“Must’ve.”

“Okay. Right,” he mutters, grappling with reason. “This means, what? That they know we’re looking at it? But surely they already knew that? ‘Cause they knew you’d seen that bank account.”

Distraitly, Dan nods. “But why are they taking advantage of that?” His eyes skitter across to Phil, and he looks pale, fearful.

“To check?” Phil suggests, even as the realisation floods over him.

“You know that isn’t true.”

Phil waits before speaking, and he tries to make it last as long as he can, but time is falling away from them. “They wanted us to come out here, didn’t they?” He doesn’t await confirmation. “Which means…”

“They needed us out here -”

“Because _they_ are going _there_ ,” Phil finishes. “Shit, they’re at our home, aren’t they?”

“Not yet,” Dan replies, yanking his phone from his pocket and checking the lock screen.

“Is there anything coming that way?” Phil asks, nodding to the rearview mirror.

Twisting back in his chair, Dan checks, then says, “Nothing.”

“Alright.” In one quick movement, he turns the engine back on, pulls out of the layby, and performs a U-turn. They head back the way they came. They’re twenty five minutes away. At least. “Shit,” he says again.

“That’s about right,” Dan agrees.

-

They don’t know what they’re going to find when they get back home. That’s the worst part. Phil thought he couldn’t feel more sick than he did ten minutes ago, but he was wrong. He’s stiff with fright, venom churning in his stomach, and his throat is arid, dry, sore. He’s too grounded in his own body. He’s too conscious of the pulse in his neck and the grip of his fists around the plastic wheel.

Fifteen minutes since they set off for home, Dan’s phone goes off. The sudden sound makes them both jump.

“What was that?” he panics. “Is that them?”

Dan checks the notification. He slumps down in his chair. “Yes. The alarm’s been turned off.”

“Fuck, fuck, fuck.” His foot pushes down on the accelerator. He dares to drive a few miles per hour over the speed limit. “What are we going to do?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are they here to kill us, to find the - oh, _shit_.”

“What?” Dan presses. “What is it?”

“The evidence. They’re gonna find it.”

Dan’s eyes go wide. “But - we have the evidence with us, don’t we?”

“The camera, the phone, and shit, yeah. But my laptop...Everything’s on there. Do you think they’re there for that?”

“They could still want to kill us. Finding that would be a bonus.”

Phil bites his lip. “They think we’ll be gone for hours, don’t they?”

Begrudging, he says, “Probably why they made the location that far away.”

“Nevermind about that now,” he begs. “If they know we’ll be gone a while, why are they here so early? Perhaps they aren’t here to - y’know, mur - kill us. Maybe they want to be gone by the time we’re back.”

“It’s possible. Doesn’t change the fact we’re gonna run into them now - maybe. How long till we get back?”

With a glance at the time, he says, “Just under ten minutes. That’s not long enough for them to come and go, is it?”

“Only one way to find out.”

A horrible thought occurs to him. “Do you...do you think they _know_ we’re coming back?”

“I hope not.”

“Me too.” He swallows again, fighting to make the bile in his throat go down. “God, what are we going to do? We can’t just let them leave with our stuff.”

“And we won’t.”

Phil looks at him aghast. “How? We’d have to fight them.”

Dan says nothing. Stares out the window.

“No,” he says. “No, you can’t mean - we can’t _fight_ them, Dan.”

“What choice do we have?” he snaps back. “We’ll catch them by surprise. If I go in alone, then maybe they’ll think you’re not with me after all, and never were, and then -”

“No way. I’m not leaving you _alone_ with them.”

“You won’t! You’ll go round the back and creep up on them.”

Phil’s surprise stretches across his face. “You’re not seriously considering this, are you?”

“We’ve got ice in the freezer.”

“ _Dan_.”

“ _Phil_ , we can’t do anything else. No way am I letting them win again.”

“And I understand that,” he replies, “but we could end up dead. Like, for real. In less than five minutes.”

“We’re gonna end up dead, anyway. Once we got back home, they’d be waiting for us. To kill us. At least, this way, we’re going down fighting.”

“We don’t know that. They could have planned to come and go before we got back.”

“If they get hold of that evidence, we might as well _be_ dead,” Dan says. He holds Phil’s gaze.

Adrenaline starts wrestling in his gut. The nightmare’s bullet shot echoes round and round in his head, a gale force wind ripping his composure to shreds.

He sighs in defeat. There’s no way to talk Dan down from this - and perhaps he shouldn’t. Perhaps Dan’s right, and this is the only way to respond. Perhaps they should kickstart a change, a turning point, instead of straying away from its edge. “What if there’s two of them? More? _We_ can’t take that many of them on, you’ll stand an even smaller chance on your own.”

“If they did plan to come and go without us knowing, they wouldn’t send more than two, if not one. Too high profile, too costly - whatever. If they were sent to find stuff, they won’t be so hard to fight, especially if we outnumber them. If not - well.”

“So we’re relying on luck?” Phil checks.

Wycoller emerges into their line of view. A bruise, eerily still and small, in the distance.

“That’s something we’re good at, at least, isn’t it?” Dan smiles, crooked.

Phil smiles back, and balances precariously on the sensation. _This is it,_ he thinks.

“So,” Phil says, looking away. “What’s the plan?”

-

There’s an unfamiliar car parked up the road.

That’s the first thing he notices.

Dan directs him to park a hundred metres away from their house. Phil does so, hands shaking. His chest and jaw hurt from so much panicked breathing, and the pain screeches out to him. The rain is still cascading down without relent. The air smells of rot.

“Leave your stuff in the car,” Dan instructs. He kicks his door open and jumps out. “We can come back for it later.”

 _Later_. _Later, he thinks there’ll be a later…_

His legs shake under him when he stands. He drives himself forward, hurrying onto the pavement beside Dan. Hunched against the chill of the rain, they stalk forwards, towards the house.

He swears there are new footmarks in the gravel. The gnome on the step has moved a few degrees round.

That’s the second thing he notices.

They hang back, hidden behind a crowd of bushes. Phil wipes his hands on his jeans. It doesn’t work: his clothes are soaked, hanging loose on his skin and flapping when he moves. He can’t tell what’s sweat and what’s rain. He can’t tell if he’s cold from the water or the fear.

“Here’s the back door key,” Dan tells him. He holds it out to him, but Phil’s fingers are shaking too much for him to take it without dropping it. Dan grabs his hand and presses the key onto his palm. The metal bites. “You know what you’re doing?”

“We’ve been over it about ten times in two minutes,” he replies, breathless, quaking, weak.

“Can’t be too sure,” he says. Together, they peer around the corner. There’s a flash of movement in the downstairs window - the front room. Where Phil left his laptop. They pull back, sharing a knowing look.

“Don’t forget about the fire poker,” he says, in one last moment of delay.

With a shell of a laugh, Dan hugs him quickly, then whispers, “ _Now_.”

They creep forwards. The gravel makes a wet, gurgling sound under their feet. Somehow, they keep the noise to a minimum. They’re bent over double to avoid being seen. Phil’s eyelashes are clogged with water droplets. He can feel the pressure of his heart writhing against his skeleton.

They part ways halfway across. Phil to the back gate, Dan to the front door, where he waits, pressed up against it, until enough time has passed for Phil to get round to the back.

(Stealth. That’s what they’re relying on: luck, and the element of surprise. Both forms of cowardice, but they hardly have time to change that.)

The chipped paint catches on Phil’s finger as he fumbles with the handle, and he hisses a curse before swallowing the noise. The gate swings open. Finally. He catches it before it crashes into the wall.

Two fangs of ice cold water trickle down his back. The key slips between his fingers. Even over the downpour, he’s sure he can hear Dan opening the front door.

He’s inside. The door is too loud when it closes. He waits, not daring to breathe, but hears nothing. No struggle, no obvious movement. He must have imagined the front door opening.

He breathes out.

Convinced he’s safe, he sets about the task of finding a suitable weapon. Something large, they decided, but not fatal. Not something he can’t hold. Not something that will get blood on their hands. Something that will stop them in their tracks, but not forever. They’re not criminals. They’re not criminals.

Phil isn’t sure such a thing exists, but he’s willing to believe it does.

Floundering around the kitchen and larder, he tries different items with no luck. The brooms are too light, the chairs too large and clumsy. Time is running out.

The front door opens.

He doesn’t know how he manages to hear it, but he must be attuned to the click and subsequent creak. It’s as if, for a heartbeat, the rain goes mute.

Still throwing his gaze around desperately for an appropriate item, Phil strains to hear over the rain. Nothing.

“Damnit, damnit, damnit,” he mutters.

Then he sees it: a large, china cooking pot, stashed up on one of the top shelves in the larder. It must be over thirty centimetres in diameter. In the low light, under a pall of grime, it possesses a dull, bone-like glow. Wobbling on tiptoes, he pulls it down, and almost collapses under the weight. Its base is reinforced with metal; the ceramic is several centimetres thick. Dust blows up in his face.

The wind is a squealing harpie. Its cries rattle down the chimneys and charge into corners, ram into his ears. The rain resembles an army of pounding feet. And, above it all, comes a cry of shock. A twisted form of Dan’s voice, a yell.

The sound of a struggle.

That’s all Phil needs to jump back into action. The sound injects a sudden, callous haste in him. Second thoughts and doubts leave him. He pulls the kitchen door open and sprints down the hallway. The pot is stuck to his chest.

The intruder is shorter than Dan, but wider, stronger. Phil hastens into the front room and sees the pair struggling in an odd lock of arms. They struggle against each other, pushing and pushing and pushing, neither daring to relent, neither making the move first. Dan’s face is welded into a fierce expression of determination. Gritted teeth and narrow eyes and a ribbon of blood trailing towards his upper lip. The intruder is dressed in matte black. Dan glistens from the rain.

There’s no time for shock. There’s no space left in him for the horror Dan’s wound should cause. He’s stopped up with anger. The pot is chunky and peculiar in his hands - he isn’t entirely sure what to do with it - but he lifts it up. He creeps forward. Dan shows no signs of tiring, but his defence comes in waves of strength - faltering and weakening before strengthening again. He locks eyes with Phil, and his gaze is cold but impatient. _Now_ , he tells him. Not a plea, not yet. The blood coats his left nostril. Phil can taste his own blood in his throat. He handles the pot awkwardly, shuffling it upwards, trying to find the right trajectory. The intruder’s back is to him...

The intruder’s front is to him. He’s a grey man, marked with wrinkles but otherwise unblemished. His eyes are a kind brown. His hair is combed to one side. He looks practically unscathed. He isn’t out of breath.

His hands are still caught in an iron-wrought clamp around Dan’s upper arms.

Phil wields the pot over his head, but it’s too late. With one blow to his stomach, he sends Dan sprawling on the ground. Winded, Dan lets out another yell, this one wired with pain.

Phil shrinks back as the intruder turns to him. He doesn’t hesitate in approaching him, fists lifted in line with Phil’s face. With every punch thrown his way, Phil bats it away with the pot. He flinches. He ducks. Dan is curled up on the ground, arms to his abdomen. Phil doesn’t dare take his eyes away from the man, but he can hear the strain in Dan’s breathing.

His method won’t last forever. He knows he’s being backed up against the wall. Any second now, his heel is going to hit plaster, and it’ll be game over. The intruder’s strikes are methodical, almost apathetic. He has a precise and impersonal approach to the task - like death doesn’t harm him, like pain doesn’t bother him. He can see it in his face: an awareness of the task but not of the person, a coal-black composure. Phil is just one bullet point in his list of things to sort out before his task is complete. If Phil dies now, his death will be nothing more than another minute lost.

Phil can’t tell if he’s about to die. No one’s been shot yet, so perhaps that’s a good sign. Maybe he wasn’t sent to kill them, after all.

Doesn’t change the fact he could, though.

The wall is bare centimetres behind him. Cold air from the window catches on the back of his neck, and his arms are lagging from the heavy weight. The sheer breadth of the man’s presence crowds him against the edge. He’s fast for his size: each punch he throws Phil’s way is like a viper strike. He doesn’t know how he’s managed to dodge so many. It’s only been a handful of seconds, though - he’s hardly lasted a long time.

The man reeks of high end aftershave. His hair has been dyed a dark brown: Phil can see the grey roots barely showing through.

His back hits the wall. He keeps retreating, until the whole of his body is pressed up against it. His shoulders ride up to his eyes, his arms pull in close to his chest. Horror fills him, crawling along his skin, as he braces himself for the hit. The man doesn’t react, doesn’t even celebrate, at his success. He just keeps coming, forward and forward, on and on and on. A blow glances off his shoulder. A kick lands on his hip, just catching the bone. Phil winces, whimpers.

Phil barely realises Dan has pulled himself across the carpet, fire poker in hand, before he strikes. With a powerful arc of his hand, he rams the pole into the back of his knees. The crunch of metal on bone ricochets in his head, a sickly splinter of a sound. The hitman (is that what he is?) falls to the floor, his legs taken out from under him. Phil feels himself relax. His head tilts back and he struggles to breath deep enough to alleviate the strain in his chest.

The danger isn’t gone. With a frustrated grunt, the man throws himself on top of Dan. Phil can’t see what’s happening, doesn’t really want to look. Dan’s hands are stretched painfully outwards, reaching again and again for the man’s face. He wriggles under the weight of his body, he claws at his eyes and his neck. One of the man’s bulky hands is clamped around Dan’s shoulder, pressing him into the ground, edging closer to Dan’s neck. The other reaches back into his trouser pocket.

The knife looks clean and sharp. It glints, menacing, bloodthirsty, in the yellow lamplight. Dan’s eyes go wide - his skin burns red - he writhes with mounting panic.

The effort to lift the pot takes everything out of him. His hands are slippery. He feels faint, conscious slipping out from under him. But he manages. Arms shaking, he pulls it upwards in a clumsy, arcing motion...He sends it falling down on the man’s skull. He doesn’t see the impact - he shuts his eyes tightly - but the vibrations tremble up his arm. The sound rings out. Sharp shards of sound, piercing his brain.

His fingers loosen their grip. The pot tumbles to the ground. With an almighty crash, it breaks into large shards, like teeth. The man slumps into stillness.

For a moment, only silence. Phil’s chest struggles against the pressure of the air. The rain stumbles in high heels across the window pane. He can’t control the tremors in his hands, so he doesn’t try. His consciousness comes back to him, though he still feels weak - but he isn’t strong enough to move or do anything about that. He stares at the intruder, crumpled over Dan in a stifling slumber.

Face contorting with grim effort, Dan pushes the body off him. He presses two fingers to the skin under his jaw. “He’s alive,” he announces, and looks to Phil.

Phil can’t see any blood on the man’s hair, but he can feel the impact running on his bones. “I didn’t hit him very hard,” he says. Then, “Oh, God, he’s going to wake up soon. What do we do? What do we do?” He drags his fingers across his face and into his hair, starting to pace as his body jitters with shock.

“I know what to do,” Dan says, and holds out a hand. Phil remembers himself long enough to help him up. “Stay here, and check everything’s still on the laptop.”

 _The laptop_ . He hadn’t even noticed it until now, perched on the arm of one of the arm chairs. _Oh, God._ He turns back to Dan, who has reached the door. “You’re bleeding,” he objects, pathetically.

Dan turns around to look at him, lifting his hand slowly to his nose. He runs his finger over the skin - his eyes narrow, a quiet hiss of pain escapes - and pulls it away, inspecting it. “It’s dried. I’m fine. I’ll be back in two minutes.”

Knees weakening under him, Phil lowers himself down into one of the chairs. He drags the laptop onto his lap, and boots it up with his heartbeat in his ears. The anticipation strangles him. He doesn’t know what he expects to see, but when the home screen shows up like normal, the tension ebbs slightly; only, it returns as he loads up his files. Microsoft Word takes longer than usual to come up, and he spends the extra seconds descending into hysteria.

He can hear the man’s breathing. His body slumps against his peripheral. From his lips falls an uttered groan.

Finally, the document appears. The article is there. Every single word, every subtitle. All his pictures are still in the photograph file. They got there in time. They’re still alive. His body aches from shock, but nothing’s broken. His shoulder will bruise, but bruises fade. Dan was right: relying on luck is something they’re good at.

Dan’s footsteps clang down the stairs to him. Phil looks up at his return, and asks, “Are there anymore of them?”

“No,” he exhales. He lingers in the doorway, shoulders rising up and down. In one hand, he clasps a glass of water.

“Is your leg hurt?” He eyes Dan’s stance with concern: one leg is bent at the knee, most of his weight shifted onto the other.

“What? Oh, no.” Dan stands up straight again, and says, “Don’t worry.”

Phil turns back to the computer and scrolls down the page. “Is everything upstairs still okay?”

“It looks just like how we left it,” Dan replies, walking over.

“So he’s good at his job, then,” Phil supposes, glancing over to the intruder and chewing the inside of his cheek.

“Yes. I guess he wasn’t sent to kill us, or we’d be dead by now.”

“Probably. What’s that for?” he adds. He nods to the glass of water Dan’s holding.

Kneeling down by the body, Dan tells him, “It’s to keep him asleep.”

He frowns. “How?”

“I’ve dissolved a sleeping pill in it.” With one hand, Dan tilts his head around, and lifts the glass to his lips. He pours the water into his mouth, and, miraculously, he swallows it.

“I didn’t know you had sleeping pills.”

Dan doesn’t reply. He sets the glass down by his knee, and starts moving the man into the recovery position.

“Will it work?” Phil tries again.

“It’s meant to induce sleep,” Dan says, bracing his fists on the carpet and heaving himself up. “So I’d hope so. We don’t have any anesthetics on us, so it’d better.”

“Right.” Phil snaps the laptop shut, and he starts running his hands along the arms of the chair. “What now?”

“We have to get him far away from here,” he says, decided. “But first, we write a note.”

“Sorry, _what?_ ” Phil exclaims, rising from his seat so Dan is thirty centimetres from him.

“He’s our only connection to this group. This,” he insists, pointing to the man in question, “is how we contact them and get them to go along with our plan.”

“But a _note?_ ” he repeats. “I mean - Are we _courting_ them?”

“I can’t exactly tattoo it on his skin, can I?” Dan protests. “He’s going to wake up, and when he does, he’s going to be far away from here. We need a way to get our information to them. This is it.”

“To be honest, Dan, sometimes it feels like we could send a flare up in the sky and they’d come running,” he says. “You could probably write it on one of those forums and they’d know it was us.”

“Probably,” he allows. He sighs. “But we’re not gonna give into that, or test it, whatever. We managed to outwit them - that sends a message. They have to comply.”

“So we’re sending unconscious bodies back to them? This feels like one of the Sherlock novels.”

“Do you have any better ideas?”

“Obviously not,” he says, and laughs - not unkindly. Just like he’s trying to figure out where he fits in all of this. “I’m just trying to delay it ‘cause this shit is freaking me out.”

Dan gives a wry smile. “Can we stop delaying it now?”

“Fine,” he huffs. “But none of this feels right.”

“We have a stranger sleeping on our floor; technically, we drugged him; he tried to kill us; we have some anonymous gang after our guts,” Dan lists. “None of this is gonna feel right.”

“Okay.” Phil takes a deep breath in, a long breath out. “We need to hurry.”

“You realise that _now_? Jesus fucking Christ.”

“Shut up.” He hits him on the arm. “I’m stressed. Paper’s upstairs.”

“Do you want a Snickers bar?” Dan teases, leading the way up the staircase. “You’re not you when you’re hungry.”

While Dan washes the blood off his face in the bathroom, Phil snatches a pad of paper and a pen from his room; joining Dan in front of the mirror, he hikes up his shirt, pushes the waistband of his trousers down a centimetre, and eyes the bruise smeared on his hip. “Ow,” he says. The fabric pings back when he lets go. Next, he twists and tugs at his shirt’s neckline. His shoulder is a raw red, but not as bad as his hip. Still, he says, “Ow.”

“I told you the ice would come in handy,” Dan remarks, dabbing at his upper lip.

“No need to be smug about it,” he says. “How’s your nose?”

“I’m ninety nine point nine percent sure it’s not broken.” Dan dries his hands on the towel, and picks up the stationery Phil left by the sink.

Dropping his hands from his neck, Phil follows him out of the room. “Do you want me to check?”

“No thanks.”

In the kitchen, they bend over the kitchen table, an open pad of paper and pen laid out before them. As Dan reaches for the pen, Phil says, “I think I’d better write it.”

Eyebrows raised, Dan gives him a disbelieving look. “Really? You’re making that joke? Now?”

“What?” Phil splays out his hands, uttering an innocent laugh. “Miscommunication because of bad handwriting would be very embarrassing!”

“Fine,” Dan grumbles, and throws the pen at him. Phil jumps before catching it. Dan barks a laugh, and says, “What are we gonna write?”

“I thought you had the master plan all laid out,” he replies.

“I was bleeding. I didn’t get this far.”

“There’s a cafe I know,” Phil offers, “in the city my family used to live in. We could meet them there.” They are both in agreement that they don’t want these people coming anywhere near their house - not again.

“That’s good,” Dan says, nodding. “Put that.”

“Then what?”

“Hm.” Dan looks to the corner of the kitchen, rolling on his heels. “How about, ‘ _Meet at the cafe at noon. We’ll talk. Don’t try anything, or your secrets will go public._ ’”

“It’s very ominous.”

“It needs to be, though, doesn’t it?” he replies. “We have to sound threatening.”

“Noon tomorrow?” he checks, astounded. “Is that enough time for us?”

“For us to do what? Prepare?” Dan’s fingers tighten in their grip on the kitchen table. “We’ve had weeks to do that.”

“Alright. But will it work? Will they come?” Phil realises he’s left the pen pressed onto the paper; he removes it to find an inky splodge left behind. He crumples the paper up and starts again.

“The one thing they don’t want is us to expose them. They’ll know we defeated them once. They’ll be scared - well, maybe not scared. Worried. Worried enough not to risk not showing up.”

“You’re right.” Phil finishes the note, and pulls back. “God. Is this really happening?”

“No, you’re obviously dreaming. I’m a figment of your imagination.” Dan snatches the paper from between Phil’s fingers and walks to the door. “We’ll wake up once this is over.”

“If I was dreaming, I don’t think I’d dream up someone like you,” Phil quips back. “So I’m definitely not dreaming.”

“Glad we’re in agreement. You know, you’re so charming sometimes-” He stops talking. They stand in the front room, just past the boundary. Dan’s gaze falls on something, and his expression turns reluctant. Phil follows his gaze: the intruder is still on the floor, still asleep. Still very large and intimidating.

“I don’t suppose,” Phil begins, “you got as far as deciding what we’ll do with him?”

“I did,” Dan replies, solemn. He stares at the man.

Phil watches him. When the silence persists, he asks, “What’s the plan?”

The question seems to spark Dan into action. He strides across to the body, and kneels down beside him. “Take this, please,” he says, holding out the note to Phil. Phil covers the distance quickly and takes it from him, before dropping back a step. Dan nods in thanks, and turns his attention back to the intruder. Searching through the man’s pockets, Dan says, “You saw his car on the street?”

“‘Course,” Phil replies, craning his neck to see Dan push the man away from him to reach another pocket. “Um. What are you doing?”

“Looking for his car keys.” Pulling a disgusted face, Dan sticks two fingers into a back pocket, rummages around before pulling out a jangling set of keys. “Aha!”

“Are we driving him in _his_ car?”

“Yes.” Dan looks at him like he’s mad. It’s not an unfamiliar look for him to receive, but normally he doesn’t feel so stupid. “What did you want to do? Push him out onto the road at random?”

“No. Just, driving his car feels a bit...spooky. Like, theft.”

“We have his keys.”

“ _Still_ ,” he insists. “Anyway. I’m still in shock. Be kind.”

Dan’s expression softens - his way of apology. He says, “The offer of a Snickers still stands.”

“Thanks, but I’d rather you just explain it all to me without being an arsehole.”

“Fine,” Dan concedes. “We’re in agreement that we need to get him away from here, right?”

“Yes,” he says. The decision isn’t the most logical one: it’s clear, now, that this group know where they live, so attempts to mislay that are trivial. Even so, it feels even more dangerous to have this guy wake up just down the road, where he could easily come back and finish the job. By relocating him, as it were, they show a power over this group while also allowing themselves to sleep a bit easier.

“We can’t leave his car here, nor can we just leave him on the side of the damn road somewhere -”

“Arsehole,” Phil warns.

“So what’s gonna happen is I’ll take him in his car. With the note,” he adds, eyes going to Phil’s hand, “and you’ll follow behind in ours, so I can get back again. Splitting up isn’t the most appealing option, I know, and I’m sorry, but he’s in no state to drive his own car. We’ll take him about half an hour away, or something, and leave him in his car in some carpark.” Dan stops talking. He looks up at Phil, bending one leg up and propping his arm on his knee.

“Where are we taking him?” he asks. His fists clench, and he forces himself to unfurl them.

“To the car, first off. I’m gonna go round and drive it back now.” With that announcement, Dan stands up and makes a beeline for the front door, keys hooked on his finger.

“And then where?” he calls after him.

“Haven’t exactly decided yet.” Dan pulls a face and yanks open the front door. A curtain of rain starts to fall inside, bent by the wind.

“It’s something for you to work on.” Phil slumps against the doorframe. “See you in a bit.”

-

While Dan is gone, Phil takes the keys from where Dan left them on the mantelpiece and goes to their car. Unlocking it, he slings his bag over his back - before thinking better of it and putting it back. He takes out his camera, though, loops the strap around his fingers, and slams the door. He rushes back to their house, hit with the sickening thought that the intruder could have taken off and ran in the time he’s been gone. The man is still there, slumped and sleeping on their carpet, and he only looks like a corpse because Phil had been worried he’d turned him into one.

Taking photographs of him feels wrong, but they’d agreed to use any evidence they could for their campaign, so he takes several. This man is only one member of many - only one limb of thousands - but capturing his identity feels like _something_. It’s the opposite of secrecy and anonymity, at least.

When Dan comes back through the front door - he’d left it on the latch - Phil almost jumps out of his skin. Seeing it’s Dan, his body unwinds, and he breathes out in relief.

Dan seems to contemplate laughing at him, but instead his eyes go to the camera clutched in Phil’s hand. His eyes narrow in understanding. Looking back up to Phil, he asks, “Ready?”

-

They decide to drive south. A quick search online offers a suitable drop-off point, so they choose that. They don’t know how long it is until their ‘captive’ wakes up, so it can’t be too far away - nor can they afford to waste too much time driving back. A thirty five minute drive to the destination doesn’t feel extraordinarily far, but it will have to do.

It takes the pair of them to lift him.

His skin is unexpectedly warm under Phil’s fingers - _he’s not dead_ \- and as he places a palm under his armpit, he realises how expensive the material is: supple and strong. As they pick him up, the knife falls from his fingers. It’s been cleaned until it gleams, but the handle is worn, the wood shaped to the man’s grip. Grim, Dan stares at it, stopping mid-lift. Phil looks between the two, looks at the point where two separate parts of his life meet; then he thinks that, really, they weren’t two separate things at all. His stomach turns over, but he asks it anyway. “Do you think he killed them?”

Dan kicks the knife away with his toe. It makes a series of dull thuds as it skitters across the floor, coming to a stop in the corner by the door. “He did it,” he says. “Even if it wasn’t him personally. He did it.”

It’s a frightening thought, how powerful this group is. They are one body: anything one does, they all do. Yet, if Phil had killed this man, it wouldn’t harm the whole group. This group is a lernaean hydra. There are plenty more heads to take its place.

They lift him by draping his arms over their shoulders, so his feet drag on the ground as they lug him to his car. His head lolls and his hands hang, limp. His hair sits in its parting, still. A purple bruise pops on his lower jaw. Phil catches sight of it, and raises an eyebrow at Dan. “Did you do that?”

“Bastard kept trying to kick me in the balls.”

“I don’t recall that.”

“It was before you came in.”

A smile finds its way to his face. “I shouldn’t laugh,” Phil says, shaking his head.

“But you’re gonna anyway.” Dan jostles him with his shoulder, and Phil stumbles back a step. Dan shoots him a grin, before he sours again. “Wait here.”

He disappears into the house too quickly for Phil to inquire. When he emerges again, he’s carrying the knife tentatively between two fingers. He throws up the lid of the black bin, throws in the weapon, and lets the lid drop back down.

“Gone,” he says, crunching back down the path to Phil. “Now for the rest of it.”

-

Phil loses sight of Dan four times during the drive.

He doesn’t want to keep count, but he does, because when it happens, time loses sight of itself. When it happens, the pressure builds in his blood and his eyes become desperate in their surveyance of the road ahead, and he wishes he could press his foot down on the accelerator. For every minute Dan’s gone, some disaster could happen. The man could wake up. Dan could lose his way. Dan could deliberately drive off elsewhere. But every time Dan goes, he comes back again. His blood flow ebbs and his arms relax and his eyes sit easy on the number plate.

The rain goes and returns. It’s less angry than before, but still as incessant. Phil watches the fog bounce along the ground beside him, the grey crawling over the hedgerow.

Near the destination, Dan disappears from sight again, as Phil has to wait for the traffic to pass before turning into the country lane. A minute after, his burner phone rings. He can’t answer it, so it rattles and squirms in the pit by the gear sticks until the ring cuts off.

Dan is standing on the curb by the car, arms at his hips. As Phil comes nearer, he thinks he sees Dan’s expression and posture change - not physically, as such, but like they lose a part of their meaning. A force behind them dissipates, so Dan isn’t a man waiting on the curb, but a man standing on the curb.

“Why did you call me?” Phil asks him as he steps out of their car. His foot catches on the frame, and he manages to catch himself without falling over.

“Check you were coming,” Dan explains with a shrug. Then, “I was bored.”

“I couldn’t answer, I was driving,” he points out, frowning at him.

“I never claimed to have a logical reason,” he returns, leaning back against the car and crossing one leg over the other.

“Okay. Why are you waiting out here?” he says. “It’s raining.”

“I’d rather be cold than sit in there with Captain Creep.”

“I hope that name doesn’t stick.”

They don’t have the energy to carry him into the driver’s seat, so they leave him in the back, head resting askew on the headrest. Dan drops the keys into his lap, followed by the note. When he pulls a pack of painkillers from his pocket and lays it on the other seat, Phil looks at him quizzically.

“I thought we were aiming for ‘threatening’?”

“Chivalry isn’t dead,” Dan says, in a tone that can barely be described as ironic. “Plus, I think they’ll find this quite condescending.”

“Should have used Calpol, then they definitely would’ve.”

Dan laughs, and slams the door. “True,” he says. “They would’ve.”

-

That evening, they try to sort out their plan for the next day - what they’ll say, when they’ll say it, how they’ll say it, who says what - but find that it’s hard to plan any of it out. They don’t know who and what will be waiting for them in the cafe. They don’t know how they’ll hold up when confronted with it. They just don’t know.

After a few details are sorted, the priority then becomes sorting out everything in their heads. They sit in the TV room, clutching mugs of tea Phil brought through, and stare out at the garden. The moon is a cutlass suspended in the sky. Specks of blood, residual raindrops sit on the tops of leaves and petals, dark and glittering. Phil sits still; Dan fidgets. Phil can almost hear the thoughts radiating off him, hot and febrile as the drink in his hands.

“You’re worried?” He pours his voice into the silence, a statement turned question, and watches it slosh around the brim as Dan composes an answer. His eyebrows draw in, and he frowns, leaning forward.

“I’m fucking terrified,” he says. “What if I mess it up?”

“I’ll be there,” he offers. “And I know you’ll do what’s right. You don’t know any other way.”

Dan shakes his head. He says, “I’ll never be able to forgive myself.”

Phil says, “I believe you’re innocent.”

A look flickers over Dan’s face: one Phil knows and wishes he doesn’t, yet also one Phil doesn’t know and wishes he does. Dan’s fingers tap on his mug.

“Did you ever think it would come to this?” Dan’s gaze is resolutely focused on the scene outside, though his mind is elsewhere.

“I thought it would come to much worse things,” Phil admits.

“Worse?” Dan says. “This is a preferable option?”

“Sort of,” he says. “It’s on our terms. We’ve got a plan. And -”

“And?” Dan prompts.

Phil looks at him and grins. “And I can drink proper coffee while doing it.”

Dan laughs despite himself. “Finally, I can have something other than your instant crap.”

“That’s the spirit.”

They retire early. Phil takes their mugs and leaves them in the sink. The house possesses a chunky silence; it sits heavy in their chests. Noise rolls over the floor. Night has always been like this, he supposes, but it means more tonight. As if the house has accepted what they are still trying to adapt to.

“Are you gonna wash those?” Dan asks, looking particularly small and airy in the low light.

“Yes,” Phil replies, overfilling the mugs with water so the dregs don’t stick to the porcelain. “Tomorrow.”

“Will we have time before we go?”

“No,” he shrugs. “But I can when we get back.”

-

When the car pulls up into the carpark, the only acknowledgement is the grimace Dan pulls as he yanks at the handbrake. The clock reads 11:37.

Clouds scatter across the sky. The light is harsh and strong - shards of sunshine cutting apart every cloud that crosses its path. The heat is durable; it’s only a slight flutter down his back, a fine layer of sweat in the creases of his palms. Dan’s hair is curling and windswept, ruffled by the breeze pouring through the open window as they drove here. His gaze is steadily aimed forward, his moments executed with a fervent level of precision. Phil presses his body against the car door and clutches the hand rest, feeling every thud against his chest.

They sit in silence, each preoccupied with their own thoughts, neither willing to make this a _thing_. If they talk about it, it’ll be rammed into the present. If they talk about it, all the issues and considerations will be brought right to them. If they talk about it, the waiting will be over. They have time to spend before that needs to happen, and they want to relish that. Not because it feels like, if they don’t talk about it, it’ll go away - no. It’s too late for that. This type of thing doesn’t just _go away_ \- plus, the cafe sits just across the street, innocent and placid in its interim.

Planning only does so much for expectations - it only gives approximations, hypothetical situations. Planning only does so much for one’s nerves. They could have talked for hours last night, calculating every word and sentence, smoothing out every error, and their plans still wouldn’t have been able to tell him what he needs to hear. The cafe’s laminated _open_ sign reflects light into his eyes, and Phil dreads what lays inside. Beside him, Dan’s breath catches in his throat, a jagged crease in the silence; he lets the bump slip away into nothing. Phil feels every thud against his chest and thinks that now would be a good time to run away. He squeezes his fingers into fists to fight the desire to wring them together, or open the door, or both, one after the other. He doesn’t know what’s about to happen, but he does know why these days Dan always looks like he’s preparing to say goodbye, and he wishes he didn’t.

The clock reads 11:41.

“Are you always early for things?” Phil asks, hands planted on his lap.

Dan lets his head fall against the window. “No,” he says. “But now feels like a good time to start.”

Phil hums, and doesn’t offer a reply. He understands, and that’s the end of the conversation.

Except, after a moment, (with the clock reading 11:42), Dan elaborates, “I want to be first in. They know who we are, but we don’t know who they are. I don’t want that fact to be emphasised by us searching for them, looking like idiots.”

“Yeah,” Phil says.

“But then,” Dan continues, “you’re always looking like an idiot.” He appears mildly amused by his pathetic insult, like he’s recovered a sense of normality, and then becomes aware of that fact, and turns sullen.

“I’ll try extra hard not to, today, just for you,” Phil tells him, squinting into a slash of light, feeling a soft, flickering voice of support behind the jest of his words: _I know you need this to work._

Dan senses it, too, and grimaces again. Phil thinks he’ll come out of this ordeal with a dozen more wrinkles in his forehead. “I know -” Dan starts, stops. Sighs, disgruntled. “I know this isn’t the only way to go about this. I know that the right thing to do would be to expose them. I know bargaining with them for our own safety is quite selfish. But, I - God. I -”

“It’s the only thing we can do,” Phil takes over from him, the gentle confidence in his voice surprising him: he lays out the words like he’s dealing playing cards. “We don’t have the power to take them down, we can’t survive them. We’re not meant to defeat them. Just because we have the opportunity, doesn’t mean we have the means. Plus, well, we don’t know anything about them. It may turn out that it’ll be worse for everyone if we tell on them.”

Dan doesn’t laugh at his word choice, just twists his mouth into a knot. “Maybe.”

“We can change our mind once we’re in there, once we know everything. They don’t know our plan until we tell them it. Well. Assuming they can’t read our minds, they will only know our plan once we tell them.”

“ _Assuming they can’t read our minds_!” Dan repeats, erupting in a fit of dramatics, turning and looking at him aghast. “What the -! That’s like saying, ‘assuming they’re human’, or ‘assuming they breathe air’!”

“Both assumptions,” he points out. “Logical ones, but still assumptions...I hope they can’t read our minds.”

Dan smiles like he doesn’t know he’s doing it. Phil doesn’t think he’s funny, by any means, but he’d give anything to let Dan relax in this moment, for him to feel without feeling the exceptions and the risks. After a moment, Dan lifts two fingers to his chin - in thought or study, he can’t tell.

The clock reads 11:45.

“It’s time to go, isn’t it?” Phil anticipates, as Dan’s expression hardens once more. It’s a harsh reminder that the only constant here is dread, pushed apart by intermittent moments of solace that buckle and collapse from the task.

“What coffee do you want?” Dan asks him, affecting insouciance, and Phil sees his foot move to rest on the door, ready to push it open. “You can have anything, but please don’t say that instant shit you always have.” His hand goes to the handle, and there’s a skeletal click as he pulls it towards him.

“Dan,” he says. He doesn’t know where he wants to take the sentence, but he doesn’t need to. He doesn’t plan to take it anywhere; he releases it into the car, wanting to leave it to linger, and Dan lets him. Just for a second. Just a second is all he needs.

“I’m not saying goodbye,” Dan tells him. He’s gone still, tense, but he stops opening the door. He leans back, barely, just enough so his hand still rests on the handle. It’s not clear if he means that his question wasn’t a goodbye, or that he refuses _to_ say goodbye - which is fine, because Phil doesn’t know what he wanted to ask by stopping him.

“I know,” he says, in reply to both possibilities.

“Good.” Dan’s back hovers inches from the car seat.

“They won’t shoot us in broad daylight, will they?” Phil doesn’t ask because he wants to know. He asks because he knows that it is the decision they’ve both selected.

“I still don’t know what drink you want.”

“I’ll decide once we’re in there.”

“Fuck you,” Dan says, and kicks open the door. “I’m deciding for you.”

It doesn’t matter what they told each other. In a way, that exchange is the goodbye they needed - less of a departure or a farewell, more of a rally, a reciprocation, an understanding that they are both scared shitless and can’t do anything about it.

Together, they cross the street, hands deep in their pockets, (Phil feels the memory stick against his fingers). Dan shoulders the door open, and they step onto a tiled floor.

The cafe is barely a memory for Phil, just a fact of childhood he can recall if prompted. He didn’t suggest it for its familiarity, but its functionality; yet, he is still surprised to see it looks completely different to how his memory suggests. The walls are cream and strewn with light fixtures and prints, while he thought they were a dark brown; the tables are a rich, smooth wood, while he would have predicted them to be plastic. He can’t say he’s disappointed by the atmosphere - one of amber lights and rustic charm, rattling with the sound of machines and the smell of coffee - but it is still odd, stepping into a memory only to see it warp before his eyes. Dan stands in front of him, taking it in with a firm jaw and focused gaze; he nods to himself, minutely, as if deciding _yes, this is it, this is where it ends_. The ceiling is low over their heads; shelves full of mason jars and other foodstuffs tower up behind the bar.

“It has been fifteen years,” he reminds himself.

Dan’s head twitches. “What?”

“Since I’ve been here,” he replies, in a tone that tells him it’s stupid and not worth asking after. He takes the step to come in line with him, and then another. “Let’s sit over there.”

He picks out a table for four in the far corner, as far away from the window and the bar as they can get. A painting of a battered bike hangs over his head. His chair rocks on the tiles, uneven under his feet. Dan does indeed order for him, so he spends the waiting time flipping his phone over in his hands and tapping a frantic rhythm onto the floor.

“Is that Morse Code?” Dan asks him as he returns, drinks in his hands, and slides an easy smile his way as he settles down in his seat.

“Is SOS dot dot dot dash dash dash dot dot dot, or the other way round?” Phil replies. Dan slumps down in his chair and sticks his stirrer in the cup.

“Fuck if I know.”

Phil holds his drink close, but finds himself rarely taking sips. A clock face, as large as the moon, hangs on the wall opposite him, and he watches the minute hand creep closer and closer.

“There’s still time,” he says, when Dan stops talking about the painting by the door and the apprehension pitches around his head more furiously than before. “We could run away.”

“Where to?” Dan asks, not giving anything away, listening as if Phil were talking about the quality of the coffee he’s barely touched.

“New Zealand. You could farm sheep, and I’d knit socks from their wool.”

Dan leans forward and grabs hold of the stirrer once more, spinning it through his drink two times in quick succession. “Don’t tempt me,” he warns, and says it like it’s an apology. “How much longer?”

“Three minutes, max.” He doesn’t need to check before saying it. The words are quick off his tongue, and he wishes they weren’t condemning, wishes they were here only to resurrect a memory, wishes they weren’t waiting to bargain with death.

“Thanks,” Dan says. Phil knows he isn’t talking about the time. He says it again, does it again, means it again, “Thank you.”

“No problem.” He feels the weight of the words in more than his mouth.

At one minute to twelve, the door is swept open by a gentleman in a dark suit. At first, Phil can’t see his features, for his face is turned away, and then he thinks he’s seeing him wrong - it’s a trick of the light, a trick fashioned from fear and dread and nightmares. But the gentleman approaches them, gliding slowly and comfortably, as if his fashionable suit and combed hair fit in such a disparate place, and Phil knows that this is a trick, a cruel trick, but not one of the light, nor of his mind. It is a very real trick.

“Oh my God,” he whispers. His mouth barely opens and the realisation seeps out, spills out, like gore from an old wound.

Dan doesn’t look round, but he tenses, goes very still. “What? What is it?” There is a swipe of coffee froth on the corner of his mouth.

Eyes trapped in their gaze, he says, “It’s Mark.”

He’s clean shaven. The suit sits sharp on his shoulders, and his spine is pulled taut - not to the point of discomfort, but to display confidence. His being exudes power, bolstered by the effortless, knowing look in his eyes. His hair is shorter, and darker, Phil thinks, and the twist of his chin looks less like a fault and more like a perfection. But it is certainly Mark.

“Mark?”

“I used to work with him.”

“Good afternoon, gentleman,” Mark says, reaching their table, and graces them with a politely ebullient smile. “I believe you were expecting me.”

There is a pause. A long one, where Dan and Phil look at each other and don’t know what to say or think, where time and noise withdraw their hands at the last moment. Certainty is snatched from them; Mark stands, patient, in control, untouchable.

“You’re very punctual,” Dan says at last, somehow mustering the strength to meet Mark in the eye and accuse him of it. Phil controls his every limb and boundary, bunching them together until he knows he won’t buckle - yet. He smooths his expression out until it achieves something like apathy.

“I pride myself in timekeeping,” Mark replies simply, and Phil fights a snort. Mark was always late. “May I sit?”

Dan permits it with a nod, and looks to Phil as Mark drops onto his seat and smooths down his clothes. _You know him_? his eyes say.

Phil steals a glance at Mark, watches as he adjusts the cuffs of his shirt and places his briefcase on the floor. _I thought I did_.

“So, then,” Mark says, smiling another brilliant smile. His movements are placid, precise, proper, as he clasps his hands together and places them on the table. “To business, I suppose.”

“You,” Phil says, speaking before he thinks it through. Mark looks to him at the outburst, wearing that same polite expression - except, nothing is as it seems anymore. “You’re...them. The one behind this.”

“Oh, no, I’m just one face of many. We thought we’d send me, as you know me,” he explains.

The idea sends anger prickling up Phil’s spine: he doesn’t need mercy on their part, doesn’t _want_ it. He hates that they thought he’d need babying by _them_. “Appreciated,” he says, lip curling.

“It means we’re on the same level,” Mark says. It’s such an outrageous lie: if anything, sending Mark is an act of vengeance, to make a point, _you don’t really know us._

Phil opens his mouth to respond, but he finds nothing substantial. He isn’t here to fight, anyway. He’s here to escape. Seeing Mark in this cruel light is another reminder of that.

“Before we do anything,” Dan cuts in, and Phil wishes he could reach out and touch, just to feel grounded, just to know _something_ in this strange world, “I want to know you are and what the hell that damn bank account is.”

“Ah,” Mark says, and chuckles. Phil never thought anyone could do that, until he hears Mark do it - laughter without mirth, without malice, without meaning. “You want an explanation.”

“I think we deserve one,” Phil intones. He feels flipped on his head.

“I suppose so,” Mark agrees.

“Tell us,” Dan growls, “about the damn bank account.”

Mark turns back to Dan. “We’re not responsible for that.”

Phil’s mouth drops open, another lurch pushing through him. “What?”

Dan stays fixed, unfazed, and demands, “Then who the fuck are you?”

“We’re the ones who are trying to clear up the mess.” Met with empty stares, Mark continues, settling into a story, almost regaling them as if this were a dinner party and not a negotiation. “The government set up that bank account, trying to solve their economic crisis. What they didn’t notice was that it would cause one. An even larger one.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“My apologies,” Mark says. “We’re a group of people who work for a better country. A secret organisation - some may call us a revolution, I suppose.” He chuckles again. His hands haven’t moved once on the tabletop. “We don’t think that fits, though. We don’t want to change: we want to maintain.”

“Maintain what?” Dan questions, eyes narrowed. Phil feels unbelievably grateful for his courage.

“There are problems in this world,” Mark tells him, “that you will never know about, because we fix them. We tidy up messes before they become bigger ones. Our goal is to protect this country from itself.”

“Messes like what?”

“Like this bank account,” he replies, simply.

The door crashes open, and Phil flinches - but it is only a small child, a toddler, wobbling from foot to foot. He urges himself to breathe. “How?” he asks, and is bewildered to hear his own voice in all its clarity. “How do you _fix_ anything?”

“We like the term _network_ ,” Mark says, talking as if from his own decision and not because Phil asked. “Our contacts inhabit every sector, every quarter, every space of British life. Through them, we can see and know everything. We nudge things in the right direction - you may say - and no one ever knows any different. We’re not a movement, just a series of subtleties.”

“How poetic,” Dan remarks, scathing.

“Dan,” Phil says, but can’t be reproachful: Dan hasn’t softened himself for this, for which he’s glad. He hasn’t done it to be intimidating, but Phil thinks that it could be, in this situation. He says, next, “Like a spider.”

Mark bows his head in a deferential nod. “Some use that analogy, yes.”

“For the purpose of...what? Getting your own way?”

He shakes his head. “No. For the purpose of justice and order. Some of the things we’ve fixed and covered up, if they got out...Well, the country would fall apart.”

“You think it’s better to be lied to? You think it’s better that we misplace our trust in the government?” Dan says.

Mark repeats, “The country would fall apart.”

“That’s not an excuse.”

“It is, if you know what that entails.”

“Alright, then,” Phil interrupts, eyes flicking to Dan and back. “So you do it for the good of the people. But where do we come in?”

“When he uncovered that bank account,” Mark says, looking over at Dan; his tone is even, but for a moment his gaze sharpens, disdainful and righteous, a protrusion from his complacent composure, “he jeopardised our whole operation. He wanted to _expose_ it, but all that would achieve is chaos. We needed to stop him.”

“It’s hardly my fault,” Dan snarls, “that I stumbled across it. What did I do to deserve _this_?”

“You were committing criminal acts when you found it,” he chides amiably. “Surely that is a fault?”

“All the same.” Dan’s fists are tight, his knuckles flushed. Phil can sense the undertow of anguish, a history queued up all around the block. “I was forced into doing your will, and for what? What have I got out of saving your arses?”

“Well, you got an experience out of it,” he says, and his voice lilts with a cruel joke. “You got to see more of this beautiful country. That’s worth something. Wouldn’t you agree? Hm?” Mark looks between the two of them, and Dan meets Phil’s eye with a look he can’t decipher, indistinguishable from the anger behind it. Mark clears his throat. “No? Well, never mind that. We tried to warn you, Dan, we did, but you kept pushing. You had to understand, and once you did, there was no going back for you. We needed to disprove any claims you could make. We are very sorry it had to be this way.”

“Trying to kill us definitely shows remorse,” he mutters.

“Ah, ah,” Mark says, lifting a single finger. “We never intended to kill you. You caught Simon by surprise, I’m afraid.” He works out a crick in his neck, and laughs to himself. “He is rather skittish.”

One of the many gnawing worries in his head comes to surface, and Phil remembers a question he’s had for a long while. “Why didn’t you release my name, too?”

“You had an alibi. There was no point.”

The cafe. They knew about the cafe. How could they know about that, and its implications, and yet Phil could forget? He’d let his own innocence evade him. Not that it mattered: they never tried to convict him. All this threat he had felt, and it had amounted to nothing, and it had amounted to the man sitting beside him. All along, the only threat he had to worry about was the threat to Dan. (Though, he supposes - as he recalls day after day, concern after concern - that was all he cared about, in the end.) “Did you know I was with him?” _Did you know I risked everything, even my own innocence and freedom, to stand with a guilty man - without even knowing it?_

“Yes.”

“But you didn’t incriminate me.”

“No.”

“But it would’ve helped you find us.” Phil frowns. This had been a chase, hadn’t it? They had been running for a reason, hadn’t they?

Mark smiles - a kind, gentle shape, like smoke, that furls around his bones and pulls them tight. “We didn’t need to find you.”

Phil blanches. “You knew where we were?” He shares a panicked glance with Dan; in a matter of words, they’ve been disarmed, winded, knocked to the ground. So much of what they thought they had is gone. They were never safe.

“We didn’t need to,” he says. Turning his attention to Dan, he speaks with a shuddering, low timbre. “We knew that, as long as you were a criminal, you wouldn’t resurface. That’s where we needed you. We never needed a conclusion.” He looks back to Phil. “We don’t like rash or dramatic moves. We use subtlety. Dan Howell, renowned criminal, being found dead would not have been subtle.”

“You wanted us to hide?” Phil checks, voice wavering from pitch to pitch, unsure where to stay.

“We were happy to leave you in hiding forever, even,” he confirms. “Of course, it isn’t the most ideal situation, we know, but that couldn’t be helped. It kept everything low key, and didn’t require any drastic action on our part - you know we’re not good at that. We never wanted to hurt you, though, mind. You hadn’t done anything wrong, after all - it was an unfortunate circumstance, as you said, Dan - and so we wouldn’t treat you like you had.”

“I’m wanted for murdering my best friend,” Dan says, words stooped low and impending. “I risk my safety every time I go outside. I’m no longer _me_. How am I not being treated like I’ve done something wrong?”

“How do you think you’ve gone this long without being caught? Hm?” Mark tilts his head, as if curious, and studies him for a moment. Then his mouth caves into a grin, a slice of teeth pulling his lips apart - white and gleaming, to match his manicured nails. “Why, you’re hardly experienced in this field, are you? You’re just a kid! No, we’ve helped you. We’re making sure you stay safe.”

“Stay where you want us, you mean,” Dan says. Mark ignores him, grin persisting.

“Anything else you want to know?” he asks.

“Yes, actually,” Phil says. Everything is gaining clarity in his head; understanding fills spaces where there was nothing before. But he doesn’t feel better for it: he still feels scared, still feels small, still feels used. Who they’re dealing with makes sense now, in a way, but _why_ these people are like this is still beyond him. “If you were happy to leave us, why send the hitma- send one of your men to our home?”

“We needed to remove all the evidence before we could move on. We waited a few weeks before doing so, but that doesn’t change the fact we were happy to leave you be.”

“You didn’t leave us alone,” Phil says. “Not really. I haven’t seen my family and friends in weeks because of you.”

“That was your own choice,” Mark says, dogmatic. “We gave you the chance to escape. We took your photographs from you to throw you off the scent; we made it easy for you to leave it alone. But you didn’t. You can’t blame us for that.”

“That’s not _fair_ ,” he says, grip fastening onto the tabletop. He’s a mess, falling apart at their hands. None of this was ever fair; hearing Mark justify it only worsens it. He feels the distinct, smarting presence of homesickness in his gut. He beseeches Dan and scowls at Mark and has never felt so trapped.

“How isn’t it fair? We did this for your own good. We never seek to do harm.”

“But you still killed them,” Dan speaks up. It’s abrupt, like a building pressure finally giving way. He sits askew on his seat, like he’s not fully there, but caught in some other thought. Slowly, his eyes travel upwards to meet Mark’s eyes; his jaw is set, eyes lit from the brilliance of a distant, distant sun. He’s smouldering. “ _You still killed my friends_.” There’s no way of telling where the emphasis ends and Dan’s voice starts. Dan is part grief and in this moment, that is all there is.

“It was…” Mark hums to himself, playing with the options in his head. “Regrettable, but necessary.”

“ _Regrettable_ ?” Dan spits, twisted apart by his disbelief, forced back together by his anger - stronger, louder, stronger. “You took the lives of two innocent people, and you call that _regrettable_? These are real life people, not some business regime, you bastard!”

Mark blinks at him, unperturbed. Dan grinds his fist into the tabletop. Phil thinks about Dan punching Mark in his perfect face, and wishes he didn’t. “This is a very complex process,” he says, tone glazed with saccharine cordiality, talking as if he were speaking to a child. He tilts his head to the side again, looking Dan up and down, and he adds, “I wouldn’t expect you to understand the choices we have to make.” A threat glints behind the words, a knife concealed in the rose bushes.

“What makes you think you get the choice?” Phil asks. “Why do you get to decide who lives and who dies?”

“Believe me, killing people isn’t our usual practise.” Mark unspools a glittering, charming laugh. “No, no. It was just unfortunate that, in this circumstance, it had to be done.”

“Why,” Dan says slowly, grinding the word into his teeth, “did _anything_ have to be done?”

“Why? Well, you had the power to bring down our whole country, and you didn’t even know it! You wouldn’t listen to us. Something had to be done to stop you.”

A spooked feeling crawls through him, twining in his nerves, and Phil is reminded of the intruder again, and how it was clear that Phil’s life meant nothing more to him than a bug on a windshield’s might. Mark explains with the knowledge they are fact, straightforward - nothing to adapt to. _This is the real world_ , his voice says.

“You can’t fuck our lives over just because we wouldn’t do things the way you wanted them to.” Dan tells Mark this evenly, without raising his voice, but the heat behind it scorches Phil’s ears and chest. “You’re not always right.”

“I think you misheard me,” Mark protests, kindly. “Our way _works_. This country still exists because of us, and us alone. We can’t afford mistakes.”

“But you can afford to kill my friends.”

“If we didn’t, these crises could cost us more than just lives.” With the flick of a finger, he picks off a piece of fluff from his suit jacket.

Skulking forwards, Dan lays both forearms on the table, and pushes his weight forwards. “Why don’t you shoot me right now?”

Mark grins, gently bemused. It’s vexatious. “Excuse me?”

“Why them?” Dan rumbles. “Why not me?” His head droops, and he says, quieter, “Why them?”

“We’re a much greater threat to you than Toby and Cadence were,” Phil adds, jutting his chin up. “Why did you kill them, but not us? That would remove the threat for good.”

Mark scratches at the stubble on his chin. “It wouldn’t, actually. Toby and Cadence were dead ends. We knew their knowledge would die with them. But Dan Howell...Well. The only way to kill him was to break him. We had to make him the perfect, unreliable criminal.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Phil mutters. “That doesn’t make _sense_.”

“Cadence was a shortcut. We couldn’t risk a world where she knew what that account was; she had too much power.”

“She was smart, and a _good person_ ,” Dan says.

“Toby didn’t know anything, though,” Phil says. “Why kill him?”

“As I said,” Mark reminds him, leaning back in his chair, “we needed to create the perfect criminal. And we did. Dan Howell was distrusted and broken.”

“You killed an innocent man,” Dan says, “instead of just _killing me_. You still haven’t given me a good enough excuse as to why my death wouldn’t solve it.”

“Death doesn’t kill knowledge, Dan. The only way to kill knowledge is to scare it into never wanting to rear its head again.”

Dan scoffs. Sunlight skids through the window, alighting on his face and slipping down onto the floor, where it falls down the cracks. Phil can no longer smell the rich aroma of food, nor see the luster of the cafe; all he can see is the shadow coating Mark’s shoulders, his skin looking pale and cold.

“What about me?” Phil asks, voice too damn feeble. “Why didn’t you kill me?”

“I think you are misunderstanding this whole business. This isn’t a matter of life or death. We act based on _balance_. There are choices that need to be made; we always sacrifice the thing that matters - weighs, if you like - the least.”

“You mean,” Phil starts, struggling against the force of this insight, “that lives matter less than your secrets?”

“Exactly,” Mark enthuses. Phil’s gut churns and folds at the sight of his grin, proud and impersonal. “It’s all about protection.”

Dan hisses, “You feed on lies and deceit.”

Mark’s grin only widens. “Our secrecy is an _advantage_.”

“There’ll be no one left,” Phil realises, voiced shocked into near silence. “If you get rid of everyone who stands in your way...There’ll be no one left to protect. Oh my God. Oh my God.” His chest bursts with a heaving gulp of air, and he frantically lifts his gaze to catch Dan’s eye. He doesn’t succeed: Dan is distracted, focused on Mark, and the lack of him isolates Phil in his seat. Dan’s jaw is fixed tight, screwed painfully into his cheeks, and his whole body is trembling.

“I need a moment,” he declares. His chair scrapes along the floor as he pushes back, standing and striding away. Phil, a little surprised, hurries after him - concern and confusion pounding in his head.

“I hope you feel better,” Mark calls after them.

Dan seems to be heading for the public toilets, but he continues past these and out onto the street, Phil rushing after him. The sun’s brilliance is startling, the concrete of the pavements sharp on his retina; the air is fatigued, exhausted into stagnancy. Phil pushes his hand through it to card his fingers through his hair, and feels a sticky, hot resistance.

“Dan,” he calls, coming up to join him at the street corner. Dan is leant against the wall - not reclining, but placed against it as if stapled, as if he is holding the wall up and not the other way around - so Phil stands beside him. He catches his breath, and, again, says, “Dan.”

“I can’t do this,” he gasps. His lip is bleeding, from where his teeth have abraded the dry skin. “I can’t do this.”

“Okay. It’s okay. We don’t have to for much longer.” Phil pushes his hand into his pocket, brings out the memory stick, and presses it into Dan’s palm. “We’ll end this.”

“That’s the fucking problem,” he spits. His clasp tightens on the USB; he must taste blood on his tongue, because he flings one arm up to his mouth, wipes the blood away with the back of his wrist, and drops his arm back down. Phil watches him do so without interrupting. “We’re sat there, telling him how awful their damn secrets are, and then we’re going to add to those lies by bargaining for them. We’re doing what they want. I hate it. I hate it.”

Phil bites the inside of his cheek. Dan has a point: the best thing to do - what this _spider_ deserves - is to expose every secret and threat they’ve kept hidden. “But we can’t do anything else.”

“We could leak the information anyway,” Dan says. His fist bashes the wall repeatedly. “We could.”

“No, we couldn’t.” Phil pushes off the wall and comes to stand in front of Dan. “Could we? You heard him. They have people everywhere. This is so much larger than anything we considered.” He means _we are so powerless_. “If we tried to bring them down, it wouldn’t work. Not properly. He’s right about one thing: if this got out, our country would fall apart. The world would fall apart. We can’t. We can’t stop that. Maybe it’s best that we let them get on and fix everything for us. They’ve done an effective job of it so far, if he’s telling the truth. It’s awful, but do we have any other choice?”

“But,” Dan starts, and closes his eyes, regaining momentum, before continuing, “but all we’re doing is proving what they already knew. That we can’t be killed. What use does that do?”

“They didn’t want to kill us. You’re right. But they…” He pauses, formulating the words in his head. “They didn’t want to help us, either. They cast us aside from society, and left us here. They thought we’d do nothing against that, because it would risk too much. But they misjudged. A leak wouldn’t end well, but it would still _end_ \- still happen. They didn’t expect us to exploit that - they expect us to cower from it - from them. But we won’t.”

“They killed them for nothing, Phil. They deserve much worse.”

“I know.” He reaches down and takes a hold of Dan’s wrist, lifting the hand holding the memory stick up between them. “And this is it - how we hurt them. We prove to them their secrets _are_ a disadvantage, ‘cause they mean we can still fuck them over.”

Dan pulls his wrist gently from Phil’s grasp. His breathing is shaky, dismantled, but he shoves lightly at Phil’s chest. “You do have a way with words.”

“I’d hope so.” He doesn’t feel quite like himself: too confident, too sure, too constructed. His thoughts are melted, one pit of burning mess in his head, but here he is - building them a compromise, a comfort, even as they feel themselves being demolished.

“You think this will work?” Dan asks. “Really?”

“I -” He stops. The blood has dried on Dan’s skin. Acid still drips through the linings of his viscera. “It’s not the best thing - like you said, like we’ve known all along. But what says a massive _fuck you_ better than a stalemate?”

-

Mark sits, waiting for them. His black shoes shine. His gaze refocuses as they sit back down either side of him. “Ah, gentlemen. You came back.”

“Begrudgingly,” Dan drawls.

Mark laughs. “I’m glad you’re feeling better. I trust I’ve made this whole business clear for you?”

“Perfectly,” Phil replies.

“Glad to hear it. Now, I hate to hurry proceedings, but we were told to meet with you, and we’re sure it was for more than a little Q&A session. Obviously.”

“Obviously,” Dan repeats.

“You said our secrets would go public if we ‘tried’ anything. Of course, we already knew that was a risk. That’s why we’re all in this position, after all.” He chuckles to himself. “So we’re curious about this. Has something changed that we’re unaware of?”

Dan and Phil share glances over the tabletop. The meaning is clear: it’s now, or never.

“This,” Dan announces, and in one forceful movement slams his hand onto the table, USB beneath it. It’s so small compared to his palm. Dan’s voice is large as he says, “This is what’s changed.”

In one wave of information, Dan explains everything to Mark: the memory stick, the article and the data, the news websites, the evidence. Everything they’ve gathered together is emptied onto the tabletop, spilled into columns and rows fashioned by Dan’s focus. His words eddy on and on, whittled into fine points by his composure. He speaks like he knows nothing else, like his every thought is damning and deafening. Phil wills himself to listen, but he keeps getting pulled into the whirlpool of his racing heart, or he keeps losing himself while searching for a nugget of dismay or surrender in Mark’s eyes. He sees nothing like that, except Mark’s gaze grows ever more charming, and his smile stretches and stretches. By the time Dan informs him of their demands - freedom, their names cleared, an easy path back into their old lives - his grin is thin and waning. That’s equivalent to surrender, Phil decides.

“Really?” Mark inquires, with great interest. “You would risk the future of this country? You would risk your lives by exposing this information you have?”

“I think we all know,” Dan replies, rigid and simple, “that it won’t come to that.” He tilts his head to the side and regards Mark with unrelenting reproach. “As you said, it’s all about balance. What’s worth more, Mark? Your secrets and this country’s future, or a few hours spent...Nudging things in the right direction, for our sake?”

Phil can’t help but be slightly in awe. Dan hates every word coming out of his mouth - but he wouldn’t be able to tell, if not for the conversation they had not five minutes ago. He delivers the last line with harsh derision, with power. He says them with all the conviction he can muster because part of him must know this isn’t the right thing, but it’s a thing, it’s the only option. It’s not a matter of survival, (if they’d wanted that, they would have stayed at home,) but it’s a matter of making an impression. Their tactic isn’t as much of a surprise as they thought it would be, considering the group were happy to allow them to live, but there is only one clear way for this to end. The other possible endings still bask in the mist.

_Stalemate, or nothing._

It’s a rebellion of sorts. It isn’t a revolution - but it’s an idea. It’s them placing the ending where they want it to be.

“Very well,” Mark supposes. He rubs at his chin. He settles his hands on the tabletop. “We always knew this was an option.” It’s hard to tell if he’s telling the truth, or if he’s lying to make the network sound smarter, to disparage their move.

“Glad we’re on the same page,” Dan snarls.

“One thing, though, gents. How do we know you won’t release all that information once we’ve done our side of the deal?”

“You don’t,” Phil cuts in. He lifts his chin higher, pulling in his shoulders. He feels like he contains a multitude of memories, of people - Toby’s slit neck and Cadence’s sedated heart and Ronan’s parting glare and Dan’s fury. A hunk of disparate emotions he can’t dissect. “Just like we don’t know when you’re watching us and when you’re not. Just like when we won’t know if you decide to kill us the next day or not. It’s a fair game, don’t you think?” He raises an eyebrow at him. This brutal assertion isn’t him, and it is him, and it will never be him again.

“You’ll trust us, and we’ll trust you,” Dan bolsters his comment with one of his own, daring Mark to deny him.

“Of course,” Mark concedes. He smiles pleasantly. “You’d like Dan’s name cleared. Is that all?”

They share a look. This is as far as their plans go - they’ve reached the end. He is as real and fragile as the summer light. Dan turns his head back, ready to speak.

“No,” Phil says, before he’s fully decided on what to say next. He licks his lips and ignores the way Dan’s eyebrows shoot upwards. “Not all. You’ll make sure I still have my job. You’ll get Dan a job - a good job. You’re going to repair the lives you so kindly fucked over.”

“I could have your old one,” Dan suggests, with a light shrug of his shoulders. “I’m sure it was thrilling.”

Phil nods. “Clearing Dan’s name isn’t enough. I want to be innocent. I don’t want to have any reminder that I was forced out of my life for a month because I befriended a wrongly accused fugitive.”

“ _Exactly_ ,” Dan says, in a hilariously exaggerated version of Mark’s response earlier.

Is this right? He doesn’t know. Are their demands justified? He thinks so. Is this the only thing they can do? He knows this ordeal was never anything near _manageable_ or _conquerable_ , knows that it takes something more than two people to tear down such a large network.

He picks up the memory stick, twists it in his fingers. Places it on the table and makes it spin. The noise is a whirring, grating sound, going round and round and round. Mark watches it in silence, face set. His brow is furrowed ever so slightly, leaving creases like gossamer threads.

Phil moves the final piece. “You know what will occur if that doesn’t happen, don’t you?”

Mark, expression politely stoic, regards the pair of them. His fingernails wrap against the wood. Phil’s heart whorls in his chest, a pressure aching for escape, for release. Dan is fighting a grin as sharp as a sword.

Mark’s hand is tight and steady in its grip around his briefcase. The decision is palpable in his eyes, in the twist of his shoulders. With a parting sentence, he stands and leaves, a shadow disappearing into the sunlit street.

His absence marks the point where reality shatters,

as if he was the only thing maintaining it.

Phil is within himself and outside of himself.

He can feel himself reach out for Dan’s shoulder, as his pulse staggers, as his head begins to spin…

-

**CREDIT CARD KILLER STILL ON THE LOOSE**

On 17th August, Dan Howell was acquitted of all charges concerning the murders of Toby Stanford and Cadence Collins.

Howell contacted the Metropolitan Police on the night of the 15th, claiming he had evidence for his innocence and that he had been falsely accused of the murders. It has since been confirmed by the force that they are now looking for new suspects in the Stanford and Collins murder cases.

“I’m just glad to be home,” Howell told reporters. “I was framed, and it’s always possible that whoever did that to me will be found out. But I don’t want to think about that. I want to think about my new life as a free man.”

[click here to continue reading]

-

Two weeks later, Phil finds Dan standing on his doorstep.

“Would you like to go out for coffee?” Dan asks, switching from foot to foot.

“What?”

“Coffee,” Dan repeats, rolling his eyes. “You heard of it?”

“‘Course,” he replies, leaning his hip against the doorway. “What of it?”

“Fuck you,” Dan says, biting back an amused grin. “I won’t ask again.”

Phil sighs, loudly, meaning it’s not a chore for him and he hates that. He ducks inside, grabs his phone and his wallet from beside his camera, and comes back to the door. Dan is waiting, face tilted to the sun, hands in his pockets. Phil pulls the door shut behind him and steps out into the street. “Why are we going out for coffee?” he asks, frowning.

“Because,” Dan replies, rubbing his hands together, “I think it’s time we finally got to know each other.”

**Author's Note:**

> hey!! i hope you enjoyed this work!! if you did, why not [reblog](http://dantiloquent.tumblr.com/post/153571371506/syzygy-fic-masterpost) to support me? or leave a comment, letting me know your thoughts! i love seeing who's read my work!! no matter what you do, i'm incredibly thankful to you for reading this to the end. it means the world to me. and, hey, thanks.  
> TEMPORARY EDIT: did you enjoy this fic? maybe consider voting for it in the phanfic awards 2016? see [here](http://dantiloquent.tumblr.com/post/155340554441/fic-awards-2016) for details!


End file.
